Kills self at Ground Zero in protest

By TRACY CONNOR
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Body of Andrew Veal, 25, being removed yesterday.
A Georgia man fatally shot himself at Ground Zero, and friends believe the tragic suicide was a political protest against President Bush's reelection and the war in Iraq.

The body of Andrew Veal, 25, a university research worker who was engaged to be married, was found on the hallowed ground of the World Trade Center site yesterday morning.

Veal didn't leave a note, but those who knew the sensitive young man said he sent a grim message by choosing to end his life where almost 3,000 people perished on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I'm absolutely sure it's a protest," said Mary Anne Mauney, Veal's supervisor at the University of Georgia survey research lab. "I don't know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic."

"I see it as a political statement," agreed co-worker Stacey Sutherland. "He was so opposed to the war."

When Veal failed to show up at work on Wednesday, his pals assumed he was upset that Bush had beaten John Kerry in the race for the White House and was taking a few days off.

"We figured he was just devastated," Mauney said.

But fears for his safety grew when he didn't returns calls from his mother and his fiancée, an Iowa college student who was supposed to meet him in Seattle this weekend for a family wedding.

"We've been trying to reach Andy for a few days, leaving voicemails and messages, but we couldn't get him," said his mother, Sharon Veal. "We were very worried about him."

Late in the week, there was some suggestion Veal might have headed to New York.

He called a friend looking for the number of an acquaintance who lives in the city, and told someone else who reached him by phone that he was here, friends said.

"When we heard that, we felt hopeful that he was just off someplace, working out whatever he had to," Mauney said.

But hope turned to heartache yesterday around 8 a.m., when a worker at the Millenium Hotel, across from Ground Zero, spotted a figure behind the fence that rings the 16 acres.

The hotel alerted Port Authority police, who secure Ground Zero, that someone might be sleeping in the off-limits site, PA spokesman Steve Coleman said.

PA investigators were not sure how Veal entered the restricted area, and the incident has prompted the agency to review its security procedures, Coleman said.

Veal's body was found near the Church St. perimeter atop the structure enclosing the 1/9 subway line in The Pit. He had a head wound and cops recovered a shotgun nearby.

"Andy was so anti-violence, I can't even see him holding a gun," Sutherland said.

Mauney said that other than the war and the election, she didn't know what might have been troubling Veal.

"I told his mother there are some people so sensitive and intelligent and passionate they don't belong in the world the way it is today," she said.

"And if this was something he had to do, it was heroic that he chose the World Trade Center."

Not everyone felt the same way.

"Enough people died in here," said Neil Thomas, 56, a visitor from Michigan. "Nobody else needed to die here."

With Oren Yaniv, Jonathan Lemire and Maki Becker


Originally published on November 7, 2004

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Be Alert: The world needs more Lerts

I do not feel pity for this man, nor do I think he was "heroic" or "too intelligent" for the "world as it is today". This was a man who was so blinded by his fantacial views that they poisoned his mind. And it is people like this that send shivers up my spine...that this world has such fanatical lunatics creeping around among the sane.

It's lunatics like this that really do give the liberal's a bad name. I mean come on...to kill yourself in protest of the war and of Bush? It's foolish in every sense of the word.

I really hope other liberal lunatics such as Michael Moore, Bruce Springstien, Bill Maher, and Susan Sarandon are proud of the liberal zombies they helped to create. And I really hope liberals...or even this man's family...expect the people of America who voted for Bush to feel bad and pity this man. I for one will not.

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Be Alert: The world needs more Lerts

This wasn't protest, it was stupid.

Didn't someone tell him that we are getting $$taxcuts$$?

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"George W. Bush surrounds himself with smart people the way a hole surrounds itself with a donut." —Dennis Miller

This story speaks volumes about the passion so much of America feels against the policies and practices of this administration.

I will never believe that a breadbasket full of apathetic rednecks could outvote the waves of populace who wanted this guy out.

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"The American people have spoken. I'm not going to imitate them out of respect for the mentally retarded." - Lewis Black

Well believe it.

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lambaste me not

I would much rather be among the populace considered "apathetic redneck" as Spiro so nicely put it...than among the morons out there who count this idiot who made a pilgrimage all the way to Ground Zero just to shoot himself in "protest" of Bush and the war in Iraq...as one of their own.

Oh, and Spiro, obviously there wasn't "waves of populace" that wanted Bush out of office. In case you haven't heard....Bush won the election...and in no way shape or form can you liberals out there cry about a "stolen election" this time around (no matter who much you guys are trying to).

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Be Alert: The world needs more Lerts

Heroic my patootie!! The guy's a coward. When there's people out there who have terminal illnesses and who are fighting to live.....sorry.....but I have no sympathy for this guy.

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"What exactly is this foreign policy experience?" Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. "Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no."

Could we sell 55,949,406 other Americans on this same form of protest?

LOL

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The Science of Brute Force......

And that is what makes you so ignorant.

This guy must have had mental problems, depression or some other factor. Because it is hard to believe someone would be such a dumb ass as to think this "act of protest" would make any difference.