“I instinctively started running towards the building; that’s just what we do,” retired New York City Police Officer Shaun McGill explains in a video recalling his experience as one of the first responders to the scene of the 9/11 terrorist attack.
McGill had been on the job for just 18 months when he responded to the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the New York City Police Department notes in a X.com post introducing the video:
“That day, McGill ran towards danger looking to help as many as he could. We will never forget his service.”
“On September 11, 2001, I was one of the first officers, first responders to the scene of the terrorist attack,” McGill says, recalling how he helped a woman who was being burnt alive:
“I instinctively started running towards the building; that’s just what we do.
“There was a woman on fire. She was still breathing and she was begging me for help. She was actually saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’ So, I took off my gun belt, undid my uniform, short-sleeved shirt, used that to extinguish the flames on the woman’s legs.”
McGill describes how he briefly gave up hope for his own life after a building collapsed on him:
“I heard someone say, ‘It’s coming down. Run.’ I took two or three steps and the roof came down on top of me, trapped me inside the lobby of the hotel.
“You know, if you watch it on TV, the building coming down, it only took seconds. In my head, it was an hour. You know, a lot of thoughts of my wife.
“I gave up. I admit, I gave up. I just wanted to die quickly. I didn’t want to suffer. I didn’t want to be buried alive. I asked God to take me quick.”
But, as the seconds went by, “I started to get pissed off: like, ‘No, I’m not going out like this. I’m not dying today,” McGill says. The memory of that experience is “a constant flashback” in his mind, he says.
Police officers in New York City need to be prepared to face unexpected danger at any time, McGill explains.
“You walk out of this roll call, it doesn’t matter where you work, you don’t know what you’re going to encounter - you’re a police officer in New York City,” McGill says, recalling other terrorist attacks on the First Precinct that took place in 1975, 1993, and 2017.
“You don’t know what’s going to happen,” McGill says, sharing his advice to officers weren’t on the police force on September 11:
“I told every roll call here, for the officers who got here after September 11, I said, ‘Before you go out there today, just know that I stood in this roll call just like you, thinking about what I’m going to have for breakfast – not about a terrorist attack.’”
Retired Police Officer Shaun McGill was only on the job for 18 months when he responded to the World Trade Center on 9/11.
That day, McGill ran towards danger looking to help as many as he could.
We will never forget his service. pic.twitter.com/kPdpVM1FwA— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) September 8, 2026
