By FDNY
NEW YORK — Firefighter Vinny Brennan from Ladder 11 has a lot in common with his dad.
First, they have the same name. They were both members of the U.S. Marines, chose the same profession — firefighting — and worked in the same firehouse — Engine 28/Ladder 11 (a few decades apart).
And now, they’ve each helped catch a crook outside the firehouse.
Firefighter Brennan was stepped off the rig at around 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 1, returning from a response to a stuck elevator.
As he stood in the middle of East 2nd Street in Manhattan, stopping traffic so the apparatus could back in to quarters, he said he heard a commotion, but could not make out what was being said over the sound of the engine.
Once the rig moved a little, he said he could hear a woman yelling, “Help me!” and saw her chasing a man, pointing at him as they ran down the sidewalk across the street from the firehouse.
Firefighter Brennan said he ducked between two cars, and although the guy tried to dodge him, Firefighter Brennan said he body checked him into the side of a building.
“It was over after that,” he said. “He didn’t even put up a fight.”
The other firefighters saw what happened and surrounded the man as they waited for police to arrive. It turned out, he said, that the man had stolen the woman’s cell phone.
He said he never hesitated to catch the thief, because as a Staff Sergeant and 16-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, he was “accustomed to making quick decisions.”
Afterwards, he said he called his father and said “You’ll never guess what just happened.”
His father, who worked in the firehouse from 1975 to 1985, was looking out the window of the firehouse in 1980, when he saw a man hit a police officer in the head with a bottle, knocking him unconscious. As other officers tended to their injured comrade, the senior Brennan chased the man down 2nd Street to Houston, where they ran into police officers coming the other direction.
The younger Brennan said he grew up in the firehouse where he now works.
“I always looked up to [the members], they were like superheroes to me,” he said.
He added that being a firefighter is in his blood. His uncle — his father’s brother — Firefighter Peter Brennan, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“This is the family business,” he said. “We just like to help people.”
Republished with permission from FDNY.