The dying shriek of a man caught on a cellphone as he was swallowed by the collapsing World Trade Center capped a day of horror at the Sept. 11 death penalty trial.
In a moment of terror, frozen in time, jurors who must decide whether al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui will be put to death, heard the chilling final moments of the life of Kevin Cosgrove, trapped in his 99th floor office.
The final snippet of conversation coincided with the moment at 9:58am on September 11, 2001, when the 110-storey south tower, turned into a fireball by a hijacked airliner, collapsed in a cloud of smoke, flame and debris.
"Oh my God ... Aaarrrggghhh ..." Cosgrove, vice-president of insurance broker Aon Corp, was heard shouting to an emergency dispatcher, his voice fading, amid crashing sounds, before the line went dead.
Observers in the courtroom on Monday wiped away tears, many disturbed by the call, played with a synchronized video tape, showing the moment when the tower fell in a nuclear-like cloud of debris.
Jurors were to reassemble later yesterday for another day of grief and sorrow sown on the 2001 day when suicide hijackers pulled off the deadliest attack-ever on US soil.
The nine men and three women of the jury, plus five alternates have now sat through two harrowing days of witness testimony called by prosecution lawyers.
Prosecutors drew heart-searing testimony from 15 witnesses on Monday and brought "voices of victims" into the courtroom, hoping to convince jurors Moussaoui should die for "lies" in August 2001 they say concealed the looming attacks.
The only alternative punishment for Moussaoui, who has admitted conspiring to fly hijacked planes into US buildings, is life in prison without parole.
Grandfather C. Lee Hanson told how son Peter, daughter-in-law Soo-Kim, and two-and-half-year-old granddaughter Christine Lee Hanson, were on a plane en route for Disneyland on Sept. 11.
"I think they are going to try to crash this plane into a building," Hanson quoted his son as telling him in a cellphone call from the hijacked plane.
"He said: `Don't worry Dad. If it happens, it will be quick,'" Hanson said. "As we were talking, all of a sudden he stopped and said very softly: `Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.'"
"I looked over at the television set and saw a plane fly into the building," Hanson said, describing how the hijacked jet rammed into the World Trade Center in New York.
Moussaoui, who says he would have flown a plane into the White House on Sept. 11, but for his arrest weeks before, shouted "Hollywood, Deadly Circus!" as the court broke up for lunch.
Several times, the bearded Frenchman seemed to be smiling at the testimony, and added at the end of the day "God curse you all, God bless Osama."
In one dreadful moment, jurors heard calls for help to emergency services from 34-year-old Melissa Doi, on the 83rd floor of the one of the twin towers before it collapsed.
"The floor is completely engulfed, it is very, very hot. I am going to die aren't I? I am going to die, I am going to die," Doi could be heard screaming.
"Please God, it is so hot, I am burning up."
In more grief-stricken testimony, Mary-Ellen Salamone, 42, told how her husband and father of three, John Patrick was trapped on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center, and had tried to call home but didn't get through.
"Our marriage was not perfect," she said, dissolving into tears.
"He died in the middle of a not so good patch ... I was desperate to tell him I loved him, before he died," she said.
Judge Leonie Brinkema summed up the horror of a day when several jurors battled tears, and all endured with a grim expression, saying, "It is an understatement to say this is difficult testimony."
John Creamer, 35, from Massachusetts told of his agonizing task of telling his son Colin, now eight, that his mother, Tara died on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the twin towers.
Creamer told the court he stretched out on a bed with his son and told him: "Mommy is not coming home and she died."
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