The dust-covered 9/11 survivor whose haunting image went viral after the tragedy has died after a yearlong battle with stomach cancer, her family said.
42-year-old Marcy Borders, of Bayonne, NJ, was just a month into her new bank job on Sept. 11, 2001, when a plane slammed into the North Tower where she worked. Instead of staying at her desk, as her boss had ordered, she fled from the building and into the street with fellow survivors.
The former Bank of America worker was named the “Dust Lady” after a photographer snapped a photograph of her stricken and caked with ash after fleeing the World Trade Center.
A stranger pulled her into a building lobby just as the North Tower collapsed — and it was then that a photographer captured her terrified face in the photo that has since been seen around the world.
John Borders called his cousin a “hero” on Facebook, saying she “unfortunately succumbed to the diseases that has ridden her body since 9/11.”
“In addition to losing so many friends, co-workers and colleagues on and after that tragic day .?.?. the pains from yesteryear have found a way to resurface,” he added in a comment.
She battled severe depression and became addicted to crack cocaine after the horrific event.
“I didn’t do a day’s work in nearly 10 years and by 2011 I was a complete mess,” she told The Post in 2011. “Every time I saw an aircraft, I panicked.”
Borders lost custody of her two kids and checked into rehab in April 2011 but she got sober and eventually regained custody.
In a November interview with The Jersey Journal, she revealed she’d recently been diagnosed with stomach cancer and was scheduled to have surgery in December, followed by radiation and chemotherapy.
She however wondered if her illness was related to the harrowing experience she endured on September 11.
“I’m saying to myself, ‘Did this thing ignite cancer cells in me?’?” she told the newspaper.
Photo Credit : Getty Images/ NY Post
