9/11 widow killed in crash near Buffalo

Sister tells paper that Beverly Eckert was on Flight 3407 when it went down

J. Scott Applewhite / AP FILE
5:49 a.m. ET Feb. 13, 2009
Source: MSNBC.com

A widow of a victim of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center was among those killed in a plane crash near Buffalo, N.Y., late Thursday, her sister told a local newspaper.

"We know she was on that plane and now she's with him," Beverly Eckert’s sister Sue Borque told The Buffalo News.

Eckert's husband, Sean Rooney, was a native of Buffalo, the newspaper said. Eckert was flying to Buffalo for celebrations with relatives marking the 58th birthday of her late husband, the paper said.

Continental Express Flight 3407 out of Newark, N.J., had been scheduled to land at 10:40 p.m.

Eckert worked as the co-chair of the Voice of Sept. 11, an advocacy group that pushed for wider investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks, NBC affiliate WNBC reported.

In Buffalo, she had been scheduled to deliver an address to Canisus High School, where her husband’s memory was to be honored with a scholarship, WNBC said.