A horrific video clip was taken of the second plane crashing into the world trade center towers nearly two decades ago. The video was taken by Caroline Dries, who was a  New York University student at the time. She took the video from her dorm room at the university on the 32nd floor.

Caroline and her roommate were woken up just before 9am by the sound of an explosion, which was the first airplane hitting the tower. She knew that something important was happening so she began filming right away.

The two women were watching the scene unfold and wondering what was happening, but once the second plane hit they realized that terrorists could be responsible for the attack.

“It’s terrorists…what do we do?” one of the girls can be heard shouting.

After leaving their dorm one of the girls can be heard saying, “I don’t want to be on the 32nd floor of this building any more.”

After graduating, Caroline went on to become a successful television producer who worked on hit shows like Smallville and The Vampire Diaries.

The video can be seen below:

On that day nearly twenty years ago, four passenger airliners were hijacked. Two of the planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Within an hour and 42 minutes, both 110-story towers collapsed. A third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, later crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, which led to a partial collapse of the building’s west side. The fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, was initially flown toward Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field in Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania, because passengers revolted.

The attacks resulted in 2,977 fatalities, over 25,000 injuries, and numerous long-term health consequences for first responders. 9/11 is recognized the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history and the single deadliest incident for firefighters and law enforcement officers in the history of the United States, with 343 and 72 killed. Other buildings nearby, such as the World Trade Center building 7.

Weeks after the attack, the death count was estimated to be over 6,000, which is more than twice the number of deaths eventually confirmed. The city was only able to identify remains for about 1,600 of the World Trade Center victims. The medical examiner’s office collected “about 10,000 unidentified bone and tissue fragments that cannot be matched to the list of the dead”.

Bone fragments were still being found in 2006 by workers who were preparing to demolish the damaged Deutsche Bank Building. In 2010, a team of anthropologists and archaeologists searched for human remains and personal items at the Fresh Kills Landfill, where 72 more traces of human remains were recovered, bringing the total found to 1,845. DNA profiling continues in an attempt to identify additional victims. The remains are currently being held in storage in Memorial Park, outside the New York City Medical Examiner’s facilities.

The attacks were quickly blamed on terrorists in the Middle East, and the US government began multiple wars that are still taking place today.

A 43-year-old man, Jason Vukovich was sentenced to 23 years in prison, in February of 2018, for numerous assault and robbery charges. However, many people believe that Vukovich is actually a vigilante hero because all of his victims were pedophiles.

At one time, Vukovich called himself an “avenging angel seeking justice,” but has since shown regret for his crimes. Vukovich will be eligible to apply for parole once he’s served six years of his sentence.

It was revealed in court that Vukovich was a victim of abuse himself. In his testimony, he said that he was sexually and physically abused by his stepfather as a child. Vukovich now says that the rampage of revenge was not worth it. He now says that he takes “full responsibility for his actions.”

According to the charges, Vukovich found three different men through his state’s online sex offender registry list. This rampage took place during five days of violence in June of 2016. Vukovich reportedly knocked one of the targets unconscious by hitting him in the head with a hammer. He also robbed the man, going so far as to steal his laptop and his truck.

Photo Credit: ADN

Prosecutors say that Vukovich had a notebook that contained a hit list with the names of pedophile targets, including his victims, Charles Albee, Andres Barbosa, and Wesley Demarest.

Superior Court Judge Erin Marston told him during his sentencing that “vigilantism is not something that we accept in America.”

Marston pointed out that the men who were hunted down and attacked in this case may have been guilty of terrible crimes, but they had already paid their debts to society and were required by law to keep their names on the registry.

In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors decided to drop over a dozen charges. In a five page letter to Anchorage Daily News, Vukovich made an emotional plea for other people to not turn to violence as he has.

“If you have already lost your youth, like me, due to a child abuser, please do not throw away your present and your future by committing acts of violence. There is no place for vigilante justice in an ordered society. I thought back to my experiences as a child and felt the overwhelming desire to act. I took matters into my own hands and assaulted three pedophiles,” Vukovich said in his letter.

“I began my life sentence many, many years ago, it was handed down to me by an ignorant, hateful, poor substitute for a father. I now face losing most of the rest of my life due to a decision to lash out at people like him. To all those who have suffered like I have, love yourself and those around you, this is truly the only way forward.” the letter added.

In another interview, Vukovich insisted that he was not proud of his actions, and does not want to be celebrated.

“I’m far from perfect — a flawed and imperfect individual like everyone else. However, it’s important to me that someone else who was born and raised in Alaska who had a similar upbringing doesn’t end up with this outcome because quite candidly, it sucks,” he said in an interview with the newspaper.

As it stands, Vukovich was sentenced to 28 years in 2018, five of which have been suspended.

Ember Tilton, Vukovich’s attorney, says that he is a person who needs psychological treatment, not prison.

“I don’t think he needs to be punished. He’s already been punished. This whole thing started out as the punishment of a child who didn’t deserve to be treated in that way,” Tilton said.

Criminals do not take kindly to pedophiles, who are often targets for vigilantes, especially in prison. Last week, we reported that a notorious pedophile faced street justice while behind bars at a prison in Milan, Michigan. 40-year-old Christian Maire was sentenced to 40 years in prison for running a child exploitation and pornography ring.

However, the inmates at the prison decided that death was the proper penalty for his crimes. The medical examiner determined that Maire died of multiple stab wounds and blunt force trauma to the head. The incident is being investigated as a homicide, but no suspects in the case have been announced.

It is true that society would get very messy if everyone took justice into their own hands. However, the actions that some of these vigilantes take are understandable, considering that the law often lets these predators fall through the cracks.

In another recent story we reported on, a pedophile in the UK managed to avoid jail time after the third time of getting caught with a large stockpile of child abuse images and videos. On the final time he was caught, there were over a million files on his hard drive.

In case you missed it: In 1984, a man named Gary Plauché killed a pedophile who kidnapped and raped his son, Jody. Considering the circumstances, the judge and jury showed leniency with Plauché and he was given a seven-year suspended sentence with five years of probation and 300 hours of community service, and he ended up serving no time in jail. The case was extremely controversial at the time, with many people arguing whether or not it was justifiable for Plauché to take matters into his own hands.

Plauché and his son Jody lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When Jody was 11-years-old, between 1983 and 1984, he began taking karate lessons with a 25-year-old instructor named Jeffrey Doucet. At some point in their time together, Doucet began molesting the young boy. The abuse lasted for about a year until Doucet kidnapped Jody and took him to a motel in California in February of 1984. Police eventually caught up with the Doucet after he allowed Jody to make a phone call from the hotel to call his family.

On March 16th, 1984, Doucet was flown to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport to prepare for his trial. Doucet was still in police custody and after he landed in Baton Rouge, he was led through the airport in handcuffs by a team of police. Plauché was waiting for Doucet with a gun in the airport, after getting a tip from a local news reporter about the flight schedule.

Plauché was waiting in the airport terminal near television crews and speaking on a payphone as all of the reporters were waiting for the kidnapper to land. He was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses so no one would recognize him and prevent him from carrying out his mission.

As soon as Plauché saw Doucet, he took out his gun and fired a single shot, directly at the right side of Doucet’s head. In videos of the incident, Plauché can be seen firing the shot before he is restrained by officers who removed the gun from his hand and arrested him. Many of the police on the scene instantly recognized the shooter as the victim’s father and can be heard asking “Gary, why? Why, Gary?”

Doucet was taken to the hospital but died the next day from his injuries.

Plauché was initially charged with second-degree murder, but agreed to a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to manslaughter. He received a seven-year suspended sentence, with five years of probation and 300 hours of community service, which he completed in 1989. He ended up spending no serious time in jail aside from his initial time served. Plauché’s defense team argued that he was driven to a temporarily psychotic state after learning of the abuse of his son.

In August 2019, Jody Plauché released his book “Why, Gary, Why?”: The Jody Plauché Story, which details the case from his perspective. Gary Plauché suffered a stroke in 2011 and passed away in 2014 at a nursing home after another stroke, at the age of 68.

What do you think? Did Plauché do the right thing? Should he have spent time in prison?