Patch Retrospective: The Death of Osama bin Laden

It was one of the most historic games of cat-and-mouse ever.

But when a team of Navy SEALs finally captured Osama bin Laden in a walled compound in northern Pakistan and subsequently killed him, the thousands of miles separating New York from the Middle East seemed to disappear.

From the streets of Bayside to Ground Zero itself, the news sparked jubilant shouts from the citizenry and the staff of .

In Bayside, firefighters at the Engine 320 and Ladder 167 firehouse greeted the news in a subdued manner as they .

When President Obama came to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, the mom of Bayside High Almnus Mohammad Salman Hamdani did ultimately get to meet the commander-in-chief, after inquiries to the White House were made on her behalf by Patch and other outlets. Talat Hamdani's son was studying to be an EMT, and ran to the two towers when he saw the smoke on his way to school.

When Hamdani, a Pakistani-American, went missing, some media outlets falsely connected him to the planning of the attacks. He was vindicated when his own body, along with his medical bag, was .

Like the 9/11 attacks that prompted the operation in the first place, bin Laden's demise seemed to effect every New Yorker personally.

In Northeast Queens, and grateful to the soldiers who carried out the operation.

It was late in the evening of Sunday May 1, 2011 that President Barack Obama had announced that bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leader and terrorist largely responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and the 2001 hijacking of four commercial airliners used in suicide attacks on the WTC, Pentagon and the White House, had been captured and killed by U.S. operations. No Americans were harmed in bin Laden's capture.

Tuesday night, Obama made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan to meet with President Hamid Karzai and give a live address to the nation on the war on terror.

"Here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon," he said.