From Police Heroes, a book by author Chuck Whitlock:

Officer Dominick Pezzulo, thirty-six, commandeered a city bus to get to the World Trade Center disaster. He and four other PA officers, Sergeant John McLoughlin and Officers Will Jimeno, Antonio Rodrigues and Christopher Amoroso, had just collected rescue gear from a security closet and were heading toweard a freight elevator when the South Tower was hit by the second plane. The men were trapped by the debris from the collapsed concourse. After Pezzulo freed himself from the debris, he freed McLoughlin, who was badly injured. He had just started moving the concrete that was trapping Jimeno when the South Tower collapsed. Officer Jimeno and Sergeant McLoughlin were the only men rescued out of the group of five.

Before joining the Port Authority, Pezzulo taught shop at Herbert Lehman High School in the Bronx and fixed airplanes for TWA. He had only been with the Port Authority about eighteen months. A resident of the Bronx, he leaves behind his wife, Jeanette, and their two children, Dominick, Jr., and Gianna.

Portraits of Grief, The New York Times

The Unusual Was Typical

Two kids from the Bronx just out of high school on their first date: Let’s take the train to Manhattan and walk around, they say. Approaching a fountain, he’s afraid she’s not paying attention. He steps in front to block her, and falls right in. “We had to ride home with his brand-new sneakers squeaking,” recalls Jeanette Pezzulo, with a laugh. And after that, she said, there was no way she could avoid marrying Dominick Pezzulo.

It happened at the World Trade Center.

Through the succeeding 18 years, Mr. Pezzulo fixed airplanes for T.W.A., taught shop at Herbert Lehman High School, restored a Porsche 944 (it is on hold for Dominick Jr.), pumped iron regularly, went on dinner cruises and just slipped under the 35-year-old age limit for the Port Authority police force.

Officer Pezzulo, who lived in the Bronx, was assigned to the Bus Terminal. “He knew everybody in there, from the maintenance guys to the elevator operators to the store owners,” said Officer Michael G. Placido, a close friend. On Sept. 11, he commandeered a bus with some other officers, and died under the first tower collapse while digging out a fellow officer. “I would say that’s typical,” said Frank Augello, a boyhood friend.