Edna Cintrón

Edna Troche Cintrón (October 14, 1954 – September 11, 2001),^[1] also known as the Waving Woman,^[2] was a Marsh McLennan-employed administrative assistant at the World Trade Center who was killed in the September 11 attacks of 2001.

She is well-known due to several videos of what is generally believed to be her waving in the impact site of American Airlines Flight 11 from just minutes after impact until just around ten seconds before the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 a.m.

Edna Troche Cintrón was born in Puerto Rico on October 14, 1954, and moved to New York when she was approximately five years old. Edna had an older sister, Myrna, and a brother.^[3]

Cintrón grew up on Delancey Street in Lower Manhattan, and her first years of life were spent in an environment of poverty, with her mother working at the city's board of education and having few financial resources. Edna studied until the eleventh grade, failing to graduate from high school, although in the last years of her life she was preparing to obtain a GED, a degree equivalent to a high school diploma.^[3]

Edna met her future husband, William Cintrón, in 1987 during a visit to his brother's girlfriend's home in Upper Manhattan. Unlike Edna, William, two years her junior, had already been married and had two children.^[4] Two months after meeting, they moved to an apartment in Brooklyn, marrying two years later. The couple did not have children due to Edna's inability to conceive; they contemplated the possibility of adoption, but postponed it due to financial problems.^[3] Residing in a neighborhood in Queens for the last nine years of their marriage, Edna and William used to take cruises, visiting places like Bermuda, Mexico and Jamaica. They also often traveled to Bear Mountain State Park and visited the casinos in Atlantic City.^[5] Her husband also said that the couple were homeless at one point, and that she supported him while he battled alcoholism.^[6]

Cintrón, a fan of collecting paintings and figures of angels, began working in the southern tip of Manhattan a few years before the attacks, first at the World Financial Center and later at the World Trade Center, in the computer support section of the insurance firm Marsh & McLennan, where she worked as assistant billing administrator on the 97th floor of the North Tower.^[3]

At 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11, a hijacked domestic passenger flight, crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The impact occurred between the 93rd and 99th floors, destroying all escape routes leading to lower floors, while also trapping and killing all occupants above the 91st floor. It was initially believed that all people located on those floors had died from the collision. Several videos and photographs of the hole left by the plane show a living woman inside the hole, generally believed to be Edna Cintrón, waving at people in the streets below.^[7][8] The victim appears outside among the mass of iron and leaning on one of the ruins of the structure while shaking her hand, and right arm, nearby to another man to her left, who is also seen waving. She was eventually killed with the collapse of the North Tower, seen photographed minutes before collapse in the same position within the impact zone. In 2024, The Express Tribune described the images as "haunting".^[9]

Cintrón's remains were never identified.

Cintrón's name is on the National September 11 Memorial & Museum Fountain that represents the North Tower, and is also on the Marsh and McLennan 9/11 Memorial.^[10]

• List of victims of the September 11 attacks (A–G)
• Casualties of the September 11 attacks

• September 11: The 9/11 Story, Aftermath and Legacy. Associated Press. August 3, 2021. p. 6.