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Byline: Douglas Holt
CHAMPION, Pa._During the last moments aboard the hijacked Boeing 757 careening over Pennsylvania, Todd Beamer calmly reported the situation to a telephone operator.
The pilot and co-pilot were apparently injured or dead. Hijackers were flying the plane. And one hijacker guarded the passengers while wearing what he said was a bomb, tied around his waist with a red belt.
"I know we're not going to make it out of here," Beamer told Lisa Jefferson, a GTE-Airfone supervisor, before he and 44 others died when the plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania Tuesday, the only one of four hijacked aircraft that did not strike a terrorist target.
Before reciting the Lord's Prayer, Beamer, 32, asked the operator to contact his wife to tell her that he loved her. Then he put the phone down and apparently joined a passenger revolt to retake control of the plane.
"Are you guys ready?" the operator heard before the connection was lost. "Let's roll!"
U.S. officials believe that United Flight 93 from Newark, N.J., originally bound for San Francisco, was streaking toward the U.S. Capitol or some other target in Washington when it came down.