The piece recovered a couple of blocks from Ground Zero in a narrow alley. (
)
(
)
Cops believe the newly discovered piece of WTC plane wreckage found near the Ground Zero mosque wasn’t intentionally placed there — but instead blasted into the tiny alley on 9/11.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that it’s part of a hoax,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said yesterday of the discovery of the rusty, 5-foot-long chunk of metal next to 51 Park Place.
“It had just enough clearance to fall in, but we haven’t reached any definitive conclusions,” Browne said of the piece of wing-flap support, which was discovered at the site last Wednesday.
A law-enforcement source said, “Right now, the feeling is it fell from the plane after it hit the building.’’
Photos of the piece of wreckage released by cops right after it was found showed a rope oddly looped around one end of it.
This prompted speculation that the part may have been lowered from the building’s roof by clueless construction workers at some point to clear debris.
But yesterday, Browne said one of the cops who first responded to the report of the wreckage had “used rope he found on the ground nearby to wrap around the aircraft part in order to move it” to look for serial numbers or other identifying marks.
The discovery of the plane part led workers from the city Medical Examiner’s Office to head to the scene to prepare to search for any possible human remains in the soil in the alley. They dropped off large barrels of water to use with sifters.
When the metal wreckage was found by building-survey workers, it was believed to be part of a 9/11 plane’s landing gear because of the design of its hydraulics.
But the NYPD yesterday said a Boeing technician identified the part as being a metal support for a Boeing 767 wing flap, which helps regulate a plane’s air-speed. Its hydraulics are similar to those in the landing gear.
Boeing couldn’t say for certain from which of the two crashed planes the piece came.
But the part was found north of the Twin Towers site, suggesting it came from United Flight 175.
That plane was headed north when it hit the south tower, and other parts of the jet have been found in the same area, including inside 51 Park.
Adam Leitman Bailey, a lawyer who represents the mosque project’s lead developer, last week said, “I think this is a prank, and there’s no way this all of a sudden showed up.”
But Sally Regenhard, whose firefighter son Christian died at the World Trade Center, yesterday called his claim “ridiculous.’’
The newly found wreckage shows that the city still needs to do a more thorough search for human remains — including those of her son, she said.
“It shows how little regard this city has for the remains of the victims of 9/11,” she said.
Additional reporting by Matt McNulty