Casualties of the September 11 attacks
2,974 victims were confirmed to have died in the initial attacks; this includes Sneha Anne Philip, a doctor, who in 2008 was ruled to have died on 9/11. In 2007, the New York City medical examiner's office began to add people who died of illnesses caused by exposure to dust from the site to the official death toll. The first such victim was a woman, a civil rights lawyer, who had died from a chronic lung condition in February 2002. In September 2009, the office added a man who died in October 2008, and in 2011, a male accountant who had died in December 2010. This raises the number of victims at the World Trade Center site to 2,753, and the overall 9/11 death toll to 2,996.
John Kavanagh (Arizona politician)
Kavanagh was the lead sponsor of a bill to remove eleven controversial phrases from Arizona's controversial 911 Monument. As a retired Port Authority police officer, Kavanagh was upset by the controversial phrases because he personally knew many of the 37 Port Authority police officers who died at the World Trade Center on September 11. One of the phrases involved the name of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a victim of a racist retaliatory attack in Arizona after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Claiming that Sodhi, who was murdered four days after the attacks by a white supremacist seeking revenge for the 9/11 attacks, he said Sodhi was "not a victim of 9/11," Kavanagh further stated "It's part of a myth that, following 9/11, Americans went into a xenophobic rage against foreigners. That's not true. America's reaction towards foreigners was commendable." The bill passed, but was vetoed and did not take effect. Kavanagh did meet with Sodhi's family, recognized his error in proposing to remove Sodhi's name and had agreed to keep his name on the memorial.