On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized four airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people. Jenna Jacobs McPartland lost her husband Ariel at Windows on the World restaurant and later reflected on how America's response—marked by foreign conflicts and domestic division—betrayed the initial unity and turned her husband's death into justification for further violence and xenophobia.