Updated Monday, Aug. 24, 9:20 a.m.
Sanitation workers found a 76-year-old man after he was tied up in his Ozone Park apartment in an early Saturday morning home invasion, according to police.
The elderly man, identified in media reports as Anthony Puzio, was first confronted in his home at about 6:15 a.m. that morning after an attacker used a ladder propped up against the 101st Street building to get into his second floor window, authorities said.
The robber then pistol-whipped the victim, tied him up and let in two accomplices, according to police. The accomplices — a man and a woman — were able to grab a television, cellphone and cash before all three of the crooks fled.
In an interview with CBS2, Puzio said he doesn’t “take no crap from nobody” and tried to fight back, but there was nothing he could do.
“He started punching, he hit me once over here with a gun and punched me on the side,” Puzio said. “What am I going to do? I’m a 76-year-old man, he’s about 30, maybe.”
Two city sanitation workers, Joseph Felicetti and Michael Bermudez, who were collecting trash nearby, freed the victim’s tied hands when he came running out of his home, reports said.
“His face was bleeding, his arms were bleeding, it was pretty bad,” Felicetti told the New York Post. “It was like something from a movie set.”
The victim was taken to Jamaica Hospital with lacerations to the face and bruising.
There have been no arrests and the investigation is ongoing.
