Does the photo show the 9/11 victims’ cars in the NY Giants commuter lot?
A vintage picture shows cars belonging to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in a commuter lot at Giants Stadium.
On September 3, 2021, Reddit user u/OKWall1298 Posted an image for the subreddit r/interestingasfuck with the caption: “Cars that never left the Giants Stadium commuter lot after 9/11.”
The Reddit post has received tens of thousands of upvotes.
The photo also appeared later on November 29 in a Video on the @theoryarea TikTok channel. It was titled “#conspiracytiktok” and was viewed nearly 5 million times in three days.
‘Fanzone’ and u/OKWall1298
During our initial research, we looked at the “Fanzone” watermark that appeared on the image, which we thought might refer to an old NFL or New York Giants forum. It’s also possible that it was about them New York Giants Fan Zonethat showed “Fanzone” as two words. A search in newspaper archives newspapers.com didn’t return helpful results for “Giants” and “Fanzone” or “Fanzone”.
We reached out to u/OKWall1298, the Reddit user who posted the photo on September 3rd. According to a Google reverse image search, this was the earliest date it was uploaded online.
Looking for answers
There was little reason to doubt the authenticity of the caption. It looked like it was around 2001. The number of cars might make sense. Why else would anyone point a camera at a fairly empty parking lot, focusing on the cars and not the stadium? This information all seemed to fit together.
Hours after this story was first published, u/OKWall1298 responded and let us know that they originally pulled it from a YouTube video. We determined that the image was not a photograph, but a screenshot from a movie. The same cars are visible at the 18:29 mark in the documentation“Remembering 9/11: How the Events of 9/11 Impacted the NFL and the Community.”
Former Giants running back Tiki Barber said in the video, “The Giants Stadium parking lot was a commuter lot. There were cars there that never left. because we would drive out and there would be cars. The same cars, standing in the same place. You know that person died. And it made it come true. And it made it not just an event that happened to this country, but an event that happened to us.”
testimonies
According to Staten Island AdvanceNew York Giants owner John Mara recalled the cars that sat in the commuter parking lot of old Giants Stadium for weeks after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. At the time, he was the team’s vice president.
The cars chased John Mara for days that turned into weeks.
It was the cars that never left the parking lot at the old Giants Stadium. So many days after the towers collapsed, the Giants’ current president and CEO, then the team’s vice president, drove through the front commuters used as a park-and-ride into downtown Manhattan, knowing full well that these cars none were left there for the sake of simplicity.
Many belonged to the victims of 9/11.
“Driving past it every day, seeing those cars and knowing those people perished, that was just a heartbreaking scene,” Mara said, looking forward to Sunday when the celebration of a 10th anniversary of the 9/11 commemoration begins. September will be contrasted with the excitement of the Giants’ regular season opener in Washington. “I just remember seeing those cars there every day, especially in the days after, because people didn’t go to work the first few days. I knew people had to work down there.”
The old stadium was closed in 2010. The newly built MetLife Stadium replaced it.
Hairdresser again remind to see the cars in the Staten Island Advance commuter lot. “Football became a second thought at that point,” said Barber. “The Meadowlands was a commuter park and there were cars that never left. Those people had died.”
The film and eyewitness accounts showed that it was true that the image showed the cars of the 9/11 victims in the commuter lot of the old Giants Stadium. Hours after this article was originally published on December 2, 2021, we’ve changed the rating from Research In Progress to True.