Officer Sons of NYPD Detective Killed on 9/11 Save Gunshot Victim

The NYPD sons of a detective who lost his life on 9/11 stopped a gunshot victim from bleeding to death last week.

James Vigiano and Joe Vigiano Jr.—the sons of Joseph Vigiano, who died when he rushed toward the the World Trade Center following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks—encountered a 31-year-old man who had been shot multiple times by a masked gunman outside a Brooklyn bodega just before 10:30 p.m. Thursday, the New York Post reports. James reached the scene with his colleagues from the 75th precinct, and Joe, a member of the department's Emergency Service Unit, was right behind him.

“Someone who worked with the boys said that I would be very proud of how they worked together to save this person‘s life,” Kathy Vigiano, the boys' mother and a retired NYPD officer herself, told the Post. “He was lucky that he had the two of them working on him.”

The two worked quickly and helped keep the victim from bleeding out. Kathy Vigiano said her sons had combat training from their time with the Marines, and that skill proved to be invaluable in this instance.