Fears for broker who survived previous bombing

Jeremy Carrington should be celebrating his first wedding anniversary on Sunday. Instead, the British stockbroker's wife, Pattie, will be mourning the man with whom she had hoped to spend the rest of her life.

Mr Carrington was on the 105th floor of the north tower when the first hijacked aircraft flew into the World Trade Centre. He had survived the bombing of the centre in 1993, when he had saved colleagues by leading them out of the building, and for days his family hoped he had escaped again. But after nearly two weeks, they have accepted he is one of the thousands killed when the buildings collapsed.

Yesterday his mother, Catherine Ross, after speaking to her daughter-in-law by telephone, said: "We both cried quite a bit and just said how unfair it was.

"They were two such lovely people and they gave us all such pleasure just by being together. Their happiness in each other was reflected over all of us."

Mr Carrington, 34, was raised in Essex, worked as an estate agent after leaving school and moved to New York 12 years ago after getting a job with a financial services company, Eurobrokers. He met Pattie, who also works in finance in Manhattan, six years ago and the couple settled in Brooklyn. She works in uptown Manhattan, away from the scene of the terrorist atrocity, but about two years ago Mr Carrington joined Cantor Fitzgerald, which has several floors in the tower. He is one of 700 of its employees missing, presumed dead.

Mr Carrington was featured in a Channel 4 programme, Manhattan on the Beach, that detailed the weekend activities of wealthy New Yorkers at play in the Hamptons, but Mrs Ross, of Gillingham in Dorset, said her son did not fit in with the fast-paced lifestyle it depicted. "He was such a raconteur and a wit but it was a gentle wit; there was never any harm intended. I don't remember any harm being done to anybody. He was just one of those people. He was special – everybody is special but he was different. He was a big-hearted person; nothing was ever too much trouble and everybody was treated the same way."

Mrs Ross said in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing her son stood on a desk to take control when his room was filling with smoke and led colleagues 30 floors down to reach the front door. On the morning of this month's attack, she received a book in the post from him about a whitewoman bringing up black children, sent because it was about a mother's love. "It was delightful but about three hours later we heard it all on the news. It was weird that I got it on that day."

About 200 British people are believed to have been killed in the attack on New York but the identities of only about 60 have been confirmed.

The clergyman father of Sarah Redheffer, 35, who died in the south tower, will hold a memorial service for his daughter next month at his church, St Mary's, in Bathwick, near Bath. The Rev David Protheroe said yesterday that as a Christian he knew he had to forgive but as a father he could feel only anger.

The parents of Graham Berkeley, who was in the second plane to hit the World Trade Centre, described yesterday how they watched the catastrophe on television, feeling sorrow for the victims. It was not until seven hours later that Charles and Pauline Berkeley were contacted at their home in Shrewsbury to be told their 37-year-old son was one of the people killed.

Graham Berkeley had just received his Green Card allowing him to work permanently in the United States and had wanted to spend the rest of his life in New York.