Dominick Pezzulo

They went into the concourse to bring people out. That is what Port Authority Police Department officers do when the property they guard becomes a killing ground. On the morning of September 11, 2001, Sergeant John McLoughlin led four officers — Will Jimeno, Dominick Pezzulo, Antonio Rodrigues, and Chris Amoroso — into the belowground concourse of the World Trade Center, carrying rescue gear they had just collected from a security closet. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum names all five, officers mobilized from the Port Authority Bus Terminal who were moving emergency equipment through the concourse when the South Tower collapsed above them. Memorial Museum (https://collection.911memorial.org/Detail/objects/120560) They were not spectators to history. They were the thin line between panic and someone getting home.

Dominick Pezzulo was thirty-six and had served with the department for thirteen months. ODMP (https://www.odmp.org/officer/15845-police-officer-dominick-pezzulo) Born in Italy and raised in the Bronx, he had fixed airplanes for TWA and taught shop at Herbert Lehman High School before he made the academy's age cutoff at thirty-five, just in time. PAPBA (https://papba.org/fallen-officers/police-officer-dominick-pezzulo/) He lived in the Bronx with his wife, Jeanette, and their two children, Dominick Jr. and Gianna, and at home he was restoring a Porsche 944 that was on hold for his son. That morning he rode downtown in a commandeered city bus with the other officers. PAPBA (https://papba.org/fallen-officers/police-officer-dominick-pezzulo/)

The 9/11 Commission times the morning's violence to the second: American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower at 8:46:40, United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower at 9:03:11. Commission Ch.1 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf) The team was in the concourse when, at 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds, killing everyone inside and striking first responders and civilians in the concourse, the Marriott, and the neighboring streets. Commission Ch.9 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch9.pdf) McLoughlin screamed for them to run toward a freight elevator in the second tower, gambling that its walls would deflect some of the debris — Jimeno would later say the sergeant saw the tower coming down and made the call on the spot. Jimeno account (https://www.mossyoak.com/our-obsession/blogs/prostaff/the-beginning-of-hell-will-jimeno-and-reliving-his-life) Of the five, only McLoughlin, Pezzulo, and Jimeno survived the burial. Rodrigues and Amoroso were killed where they stood.

Pezzulo came down face-first and ended up in a pushup position, the one man of the three who was not pinned. APB (https://apbweb.com/2021/09/9-11-cop-sees-sunlight-through-his-darkness/) At McLoughlin's direction he began working to free Jimeno, whose legs were trapped beneath a slab of concrete held in place by rebar — too much for one man's strength, no matter how much of it he had. Police1 (https://www.police1.com/archive/articles/buried-alive-Zhvk2ntH16m3y8tv/) By Jimeno's own account, Pezzulo spent nearly half an hour trying to free him instead of climbing out of the rubble first. ROI-NJ (https://www.roi-nj.com/2019/09/11/opinion/survivors-story-will-jimeno-1-of-2-officers-pulled-from-world-trade-center-rubble-delivers-powerful-reminder-of-9-11/) Think about that arithmetic: a man with an open path to the surface, spending it on a slab he could not move.

Then the North Tower fell. The Commission records the collapse at 10:28:25. Commission Ch.9 (https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch9.pdf) Debris shifted through the pile. Pezzulo was mortally wounded. McLoughlin's legs were crushed. The Memorial Museum records what Pezzulo did with what he had left: though fatally injured, he fired his service weapon upward toward the only hole of light they could see, hoping the shot would tell someone above that living officers were down there. Memorial Museum (https://collection.911memorial.org/Detail/objects/120560) Jimeno later told it this way — that Pezzulo fired with his last couple of breaths, about four feet from Jimeno's head, and said, "Will, don't forget that I died trying to save you guys," then slumped over. Police1 (https://www.police1.com/archive/articles/buried-alive-Zhvk2ntH16m3y8tv/) Whether every word of a last exchange survives memory exactly is something no transcript can settle. The gunshot, the attempt, and the death beside Jimeno are the documented facts, and they need no varnish.

Jimeno and McLoughlin lived. They lay in a pocket of the pile, buried roughly thirty feet beneath the debris by Jimeno's account, while the day above them went dark. Jimeno account (https://www.mossyoak.com/our-obsession/blogs/prostaff/will-jimeno-finally-hears-voices-of-hope-on-9-11-at-the-world-trade) Around eight that evening, two men in Marine uniforms who had separately come to the pile — former Marines Jason Thomas and Dave Karnes, both out of active duty before that day — climbed the debris calling out, "This is the United States Marines! Is anyone down there?" USMC Museum (https://www.usmcmuseum.com/uploads/6/0/3/6/60364049/karnes_and_thomas.pdf) Jimeno answered with the PAPD officer-down code: "Eight-13, Port Authority PD, officers down." Police1 (https://www.police1.com/archive/articles/buried-alive-Zhvk2ntH16m3y8tv/) A retired paramedic named Chuck Sereika climbed down into the hole and began treating Jimeno, and more rescuers followed. USMC Museum (https://www.usmcmuseum.com/uploads/6/0/3/6/60364049/karnes_and_thomas.pdf) Thomas never gave his first name that day and left after Jimeno was pulled out; it took five years before Karnes confirmed his identity from a photograph, and the mystery man finally had a name. FireRescue1 (https://www.firerescue1.com/terrorism-wmd-response/articles/prodded-by-family-911-rescuer-steps-forward-5-years-later-as-his-actions-appear-in-movie-hekKOwbvLt5RWm8L/)

Jimeno was extricated around eleven that night, after roughly thirteen hours; McLoughlin, buried deeper, came out after roughly twenty-two. Memorial Museum (https://collection.911memorial.org/Detail/objects/120560) They were the eighteenth and nineteenth of only twenty people pulled alive from the rubble. FireRescue1 (https://www.firerescue1.com/terrorism-wmd-response/articles/surviving-911-rescuer-says-the-time-is-right-for-world-trade-center-FO4hMo6i0lKg5Vf7/) Jimeno would later say of it, simply: 220 stories fell on him and his sergeant, and they survived. ROI-NJ (https://www.roi-nj.com/2019/09/11/opinion/survivors-story-will-jimeno-1-of-2-officers-pulled-from-world-trade-center-rubble-delivers-powerful-reminder-of-9-11/)

Thirty-seven Port Authority officers died on September 11, the largest loss of life any police force has suffered in a single day. FireRescue1 (https://www.firerescue1.com/9-11/articles/how-many-firefighters-died-on-911-SKaClbnYxUtzowuK/) The Memorial's broader count holds 441 first responders from more than thirty agencies: 343 from the FDNY, 37 from the PAPD, 23 from the NYPD, and 38 from other agencies. Memorial backgrounder (https://911memorial.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Backgrounder%20052219.pdf) In 2005 Pezzulo was among the fallen officers posthumously awarded the 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor, and his name is cut into the South Pool at Panel S-29. Pezzulo record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominick_Pezzulo)

That is the record. A thirty-six-year-old with thirteen months on the job and a restored Porsche waiting at home went into a burning concourse, survived one tower coming down, and spent his last half hour moving rock for another man instead of climbing out. When the second tower took him, he fired a gun at a hole of light so the living would know where to dig. Remember Dominick Pezzulo without varnish: PAPD, concourse rescue, buried when the South Tower fell, freed himself, tried to free Jimeno, mortally wounded when the North Tower's debris shifted. Two teammates gone in the first collapse. Two others carried out hours later into a country that would never be the same.

America asks a great deal of the people who wear a badge in its public spaces. On that morning the ask became impossible and they answered anyway. Pezzulo's answer was not a press conference. It was motion under wreckage, in the dark, with no audience and no medal ceremony: the refusal to treat his own escape as the end of the assignment. For him it was not a slogan on a wall. It was a teammate still breathing under stone. You do not leave your people.

Hold it against the cheap talk that treats September 11 as a blur. Hold it when someone says courage is only a word. Under the ruined concourse it was a man moving rock for another man, and dying before the rock would yield.