Body of Trade Center Worker Found; Death Toll Is Raised to 6

The body of a missing restaurant employee, buried for more than two weeks under 12 feet of rubble, was recovered from the World Trade Center parking garage Monday, bringing the death toll to six in the Feb. 26 terrorist bombing.

Wilfredo Mercado, 40, last seen unloading supplies in the commissary, had been the object of a long and tedious search by officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, aided by specially trained dogs and thermal-imaging cameras. Working in bitter cold, a team of searchers found Mercado in the underground garage three levels below the commissary and two levels below the suspected site of the massive bomb, which also injured more than 1,000 people.

An autopsy to determine the cause of death was scheduled for today, officials said.

“We’re just grateful for the family that he’s been found so this ordeal can end,” said John Liegel of the Port Authority police. He said searchers discovered the frozen body 17 days, almost to the hour, after the blast ripped through the trade center garage and created a crater 60 feet deep.

“About 75% of the commissary was down there with him,” Liegel said.

The search for Mercado, the receiving manager for Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of one of the twin 110-story towers, was hampered from the outset by tons of dangling or unstable concrete slabs and other debris that had to be shored up before investigators could explore the crater for his body and clues to the crime.

Through the long wait, Mercado’s wife, Olga, and the couple’s two young daughters lived in a hotel across the street. Sometimes the family visited the search site to pray while workers slowly scraped away what Liegel described as “totally compressed” concrete dust and debris.

The crater also was filled with broken concrete slabs, automobiles and heavy equipment. Blizzard conditions over the weekend temporarily slowed the search, forcing some work to be suspended for much of Saturday. It resumed Sunday and Monday under sub-freezing conditions.

By Monday, about 1,600 tons of rubble had been removed from the underground garage, leaving another 1,000 tons in the crater created by what authorities believe was a half-ton chemical bomb concealed in a rented van.

So far, two Palestinian men from New Jersey have been charged with aiding and abetting the bomb attack. An Egyptian immigrant from Brooklyn also has been charged with obstruction of justice in the case. Authorities say they are looking for several additional suspects who may have fled the country.

Meanwhile, unidentified sources told the newspaper Newsday that investigators have found physical evidence that links the two Palestinian men held in the bombing to a storage locker in Jersey City, N.J., where ingredients to make a bomb were found.

The sources would not reveal what the evidence was nor would they comment on whether fingerprints were found at the site. However, the evidence strengthens the case against Mohammed A. Salameh and Nidal Ayyad, they told Newsday.