Mohammad Salman Hamdani

Mohammad Salman Hamdani (; December 28, 1977 – September 11, 2001) was a Pakistani American New York City Police Department cadet and emergency medical technician who was killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center during 9/11, where he had gone to try to help people. In the weeks following 9/11, reports surfaced that the missing Hamdani was being investigated for possible involvement with the perpetrators, but this suspicion proved to be false and he was subsequently hailed as a hero by the New York City mayor and police commissioner.

Hamdani was mentioned in the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act of the U.S. Congress as an example of Muslim Americans who acted heroically on 9/11. An intersection in Bayside, Queens has been renamed "Salman Hamdani Way" in his memory, and scholarship awards established in his name at Rockefeller University and Queens College in New York.

Life Salman Hamdani was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and moved to America with his parents when he was 13 months old. He had two younger brothers, Adnaan and Zeshan, who were born in the US. His mother, Talat, taught English at a Queens middle school and his father, Saleem, was the owner and operator of a convenience store in Brooklyn until his death on June 26, 2004.

The family lived in Bayside, where Hamdani was on the football team at Bayside High School. He majored in biochemistry at Queens College while working part-time as an emergency medical technician (EMT). He studied abroad in London his junior year before graduating in June 2001.

He was determined to get into medical school, but if he was not accepted he wanted to become a detective and apply his scientific knowledge toward forensics. He joined the New York Police Department's (NYPD) cadet program in addition to working at Rockefeller University. The night before September 11, he was working on an application for medical school and helping his father cope with heart disease. In the weeks following the attack, investigators from the FBI and NYPD began questioning the family about Hamdani. His mother said US Representative Gary Ackerman, whose congressional district included Queens, was among the officials who came to the family's Bayside home to ask questions about her son, including what his motives were for becoming a police cadet, which Internet chat rooms he visited and why he had been in London. According to the family, CIA officials came to help find their missing son. They confiscated a college graduation photo of Hamdani posing with a student from Afghanistan.

In October 2001, remains of a body, along with Hamdani's medical bag and identification, were found in the wreckage of the North Tower at Ground Zero. He was cited in the USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law on October 26, 2001, in Title 1, section 102:

Hamdani's remains were positively identified through a DNA match in March 2002. Bloomberg called him "an example of how one can make the world better."

In 2002, Rockefeller University established a memorial scholarship fund in Hamdani's name for outstanding Pakistani-American students.

Also in 2014, Hamdani won the Unity Productions Foundation's "Noor Inayat Khan Courage Award."

In 2023, a documentary about Hamdani entitled American Jedi: The Salman Hamdani Story was released by Alexander Street.

Memorial controversy At the National September 11 Memorial, Hamdani is memorialized at the South Pool, on Panel S-66. Despite the fact that he was found under the rubble of the North Tower, his name is not included at the North Pool among the other North Tower victims. The New York Times noted that his name is on the final panel at the memorial, "with the names of others who did not fit into the rubrics the memorial created to give placements meaning. That section is for those who had only a loose connection, or none, to the World Trade Center."

"[On his way to work on Sept. 11] he must have seen the flames at the World Trade Center from the elevated train, then rushed downtown to try to help. He did not make that decision and take that fatal detour as a lab analyst, but as the first responder he was trained to be," Talat said.

In a January 2012 article, Hamdani's mother Talat stated that she planned to continue to lobby for Hamdani to be recognized as a first responder.