Every one else in this article is referred to using a professional title or full name. The low life terrorist is referred to as Mister who was killed in the crash which he and his terrorist cohorts orchestrated. Only in the NY Times, and perhaps the Washington Post, the two most liberal rags in the country ... would you see such convuluted PC crap.
IMHO
It's the New York Times style; always has been -- a leftover quaintness from its beginnings as a "polite" newspaper. Nothing to do with PC and everything to do with hidebound tradition.