20 years ago, the U.S.'s second-deadliest plane crash shook a terrified nation two months after the Sept. 11 attacks. But it really hit one group particularly hard: New York City's growing Dominican American community.
"We were waiting and waiting and waiting," Wilson, 51, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility, told NBC News. He said he remembers gathering at Sanchez's mother's apartment,"just praying for any possibility that maybe he missed the flight or took another flight, which was not unusual, because there were many different flights during the day.
“I still remember going to Arka Lounge to celebrate life after 9/11,” Wilson said, referencing an upscale club that became a hangout for young professionals who lived or had grown up in the largely Latino and immigrant Washington Heights neighborhood. He recalled how thewas even more painful for Dominican Americans in New York City, in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history.
Once terrorism was ruled out as a cause of the crash, many Dominicans felt the mainstream media was quick to move on.