Twenty-five years after a woman survived the September 11 attacks at New York’s World Trade Center only to die in a plane crash two months later, her grieving family is sharing her story publicly for the first time.
Hilda Yolanda Mayol was 26 when she died on November 12, 2001.
A Dominican immigrant, Mayol worked at the Au Bon Pain restaurant on the ground floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
She was escaping the North Tower as the South Tower collapsed, running through air thick with dust and debris.
Exactly two months and one day after surviving the terrorist attacks, Mayol boarded a flight bound for her birth country.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that Flight 587 crashed after ‘unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs,’ rejecting the immediate public fear that the disaster was another terrorist attack.
Mayol’s daughter, Yari Mayol, was just 10 months old when her mother died, she told CNN.
Yari said she can only imagine what her mother experienced in her final moments.
Hilda Yolanda Mayol was 26 when she died on November 12, 2001, just two months after surviving the September 11 terrorist attacks
The National Transportation Safety Board found that Flight 587 crashed after ‘unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs’
Mayol was among 265 people, most of them of Dominican descent, killed when the Airbus A300 crashed in Belle Harbor, Queens
‘I know she must have been terrified. I just don’t know what she would have been thinking,’ Yari said.
‘I don’t like to think about it,’ she added.
Mayol was one of 265 people, many of them Dominican, who died when the Airbus A300 crashed into the residential neighborhood of Belle Harbor in Queens.
In September 2001, Mayol had recently transferred to a new position at the Au Bon Pain restaurant on the World Trade Center’s ground floor.
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Her sister Joshua told CNN that Mayol was deeply devoted to their family in the Dominican Republic and worked tirelessly in New York to provide them with financial support.
When hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8.46am, Mayol’s manager urgently ordered her to leave and get to safety, Joshua said.
As Mayol made her way out, a firefighter stopped briefly to give her oxygen before rushing back to help others flee the building, according to Joshua.
Covered in dust, Mayol walked home and called relatives in New York and the Dominican Republic.
Two months after the September 11 attacks, Mayol was working another job in New York while her children visited relatives in San Pedro de Macorís.
Wanting to see them after about a week apart, she arranged time off from work and booked an earlier American Airlines Flight 587 so she could bring them home.
A woman mourns a relative killed in the Flight 587 crash during a memorial service in Belle Harbor, Queens, on November 12, 2003
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that Flight 587 crashed because of ‘unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs,’ not because of another terrorist attack as many initially feared
The crash claimed the lives of two pilots, seven flight attendants, 251 passengers and five people on the ground
The night before she was due to leave, Mayol called her sister in the southeastern Dominican Republic to check on her family.
The next morning, Mayol traveled to JFK Airport as her husband left for work.
Joshua first heard that something had happened while she was collecting her children from school. Her family told her not to panic as they prepared a meal to welcome Mayol.
Believing Mayol would soon arrive, Joshua took a taxi to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo, where she saw American Airlines Flight 587 listed on the arrivals board.
But the aircraft never arrived. It crashed shortly after taking off from New York.
The disaster killed two pilots, seven flight attendants, 251 passengers and five people on the ground.
