Detective Death May Be Linked To WTC Work

By ARI PAUL

A veteran Detective has died from a disease believed to be linked to his hours working near World Trade Center debris.

JAMES ZADROGA: An earlier victim.

Det. William Holfester, 43, died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma last month. He had been with the Police Department for 17 years, and spent weeks sifting through World Trade Center rubble at a landfill in Staten Island.

'A Marvelous Cop'

Those who worked with him described him as someone who rose to prominence at busy precincts in Manhattan, investigating crimes involving narcotics, and put his family first.

"He was a marvelous police officer slash Detective," said Brian Hunt, the chairman of the board of trustees of the Detectives Endowment Association, who worked with Detective Holfester in the field and visited him often at the hospital after his illness worsened. "Extremely hard-working, diligent, very industrious. Big fellow. Very unassuming. It took a bit to know him, but once you did you kind of wish you knew him a lot longer."

His death highlights what many first-responders' unions have been saying: that their members who worked during and in the aftermath of 9/11 are suffering illnesses from breathing in toxins such as asbestos and benzene, and particles of human remains.

"I feel there are many who have been diagnosed with World Trade Center illnesses," said DEA President Michael J. Palladino of his members. "I would imagine as we progress in time there will be even more. My opinion, the rank of Detective seems to be mostly affected because Ground Zero was declared a crime scene. The landfill was solely a Detective operation."

At Odds With City

Detective James Zadroga, who worked hundreds of hours at Ground Zero, died in 2006 at age 34, and while a New Jersey Medical Examiner and the NYPD Medical Board linked the toxins found in his body to his work at Ground Zero, Chief Medical Examiner Charles S. Hirsch insisted that his death was caused by the abuse of prescription drugs.

Retired Detective John Walcott was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia after working in and around the World Trade Center site and is a plaintiff in a pending lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan claiming that the $1 billion granted to the city by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to give to workers suffering respiratory illnesses and injuries as a result of working on Ground Zero has been improperly withheld.

Detective Holfester is survived by a wife, two children and three grandchildren.

'Federal Responsibility'

While Mr. Palladino was confident that the NYPD Medical Board would grant Detective Holfester's family line-of-duty benefits, he thought that the Federal Government, not city agencies or unions, should be the ones taking care of Ground Zero workers.

"I think we really need an all-hands effort, and that's the unions and the city acting jointly to not let Washington, D.C. off the hook," he said. "[9/11] was an attack on democracy. It's not fair that the City of New York and the taxpayers have to foot the bill."