Man in famous 9/11 image dies of COVID-19

The image is also featured in the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York

stephen Stephen Cooper (the man in the black shirt on the extreme left) in the famous 9/11 photo | AP

Stephen Cooper, the man in the famous image from 9/11, died of coronavirus on Sunday in Florida. The image in which Cooper is seen feeling smoke and debris as the south tower of the World Trade Center crumbled is one of the most famous images from the event.

The picture, taken by the-then Associated Press photographer Suzanne Plunkett, went on to be used widely by newspapers and magazines, including the Time magazine. The image is also featured on the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York.

Cooper, an electrical engineer from New York, lived part-time on Delray Beach, Florida. He died at age 78 on March 28

  

“He didn't even know the photograph was taken,” Janet Rashes, Cooper’s partner for 33 years was quoted as saying in a CNN report. “All of a sudden he’s looking in Time magazine one day and he sees himself and says, ‘Oh my God That’s me’. He was amazed. Couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Rashes said that Cooper was, on that day, delivering some documents near the World Trade Center when he heard a police officer say, ‘you have to run’. “It is a shame I was never aware of the identity of Mr Cooper,” Plunkett wrote after his death in an email to The Palm Beach Post.