Killing of Henryk Siwiak

Around 11:40 p.m. on September 11, 2001, Henryk Siwiak (1955–2001), a Polish immigrant to the United States, was fatally shot on a street in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, where he had mistakenly gone in order to start a new job. After being shot once in the lung, Siwiak was able to make it to the door of a nearby house before he collapsed. The homicide remains unsolved; Siwiak has been described as "the last person killed in New York on 9/11", although he was not a victim of the terror attacks earlier that day.

The initial investigation into the crime may have been hampered, police believe, by the diversion of law enforcement resources in the city in the wake of that day's terrorist attacks, which ultimately killed almost 3,000 people. Since Siwiak was not robbed, wore camouflage clothing and spoke poor English with a heavy accent, detectives have speculated that his killer may have thought he had something to do with the attacks. Siwiak's homicide is the only one recorded in New York City on September 11, 2001, since the city does not include the deaths from the attacks in its official crime statistics.

Background

A native of Kraków, Henryk Siwiak had worked as an inspector for Polish State Railways. He was married to Ewa Siwiak and had two children, 17-year-old Gabriela and 10-year-old Adam. After he was laid off around 2000, Siwiak went to New York City to visit his sister Lucyna, who had been living in Far Rockaway, Queens, for six years.