Suicide suspected at WTC site

Friends say man was distraught over election results

NEW YORK (AP) — A 25-year-old from Georgia who was distraught over President Bush’s re-election apparently killed himself at ground zero.

Andrew Veal’s body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits area of the former World Trade Center site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.

Veal’s mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The New York Times in Sunday’s editions.

Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.

“I’m absolutely sure it’s a protest,” Mary Anne Mauney, Veal’s supervisor at the lab, told The Daily News. “I don’t know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic.”

Police were investigating how Veal entered the former World Trade Center site, which is protected by high fences and owned by the Port Authority