Remembering 9/11 victim Glen Pettit, videographer for NYPD and News 12

The last time anyone saw Glen Pettit alive in the south tower lobby of the World Trade Center was about 9:48 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, or 10 minutes before the collapse. A uniformed officer for the NYPD's video production unit, Pettit was pushing past firefighters on the way down an escalator, like a commuter rushing to catch a train. He had a camera balanced on one shoulder.

It's a fleeting glimpse, just a few seconds long, captured by another cameraman, Jack Taliercio of WNYW/5, whom Pettit had stopped seconds earlier from following him. Perhaps only Pettit, then 30, knew what he expected to film as he plunged into darkness. After his body was recovered three months later, on Dec. 15, 2001, his family collected a few personal items, like a claddagh ring, but never saw what was on the film. "I assume [the NYPD] didn't want the public to see it," said his sister, Deirdre Kroupa, of Central Islip.

"We went there to get rescue shots of police and firemen helping people," said Scott Nicholson, his partner at the time. "But knowing Glen, he probably put the camera down to help people, too. That's the type of guy he was."

Only one working reporter was killed covering 9/11 from the ground that day — Bill Biggart, a 54-year-old freelance photojournalist. But Pettit may have been the only hybrid: a police officer collecting video for training and promotional purposes, and a former TV news reporter whose instincts were conjoined in that last moment captured on film.

Pettit, who had been living in Oakdale at the time, had spent most of his career at News 12 as a highly regarded cameraman. For years on Sept. 11, News 12 has "paused to remember a beloved co-worker."

Pettit came from a large family that lived on Louis Kossuth Avenue near Ronkonkoma Middle School. After Connetquot High, he went to New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury for a degree in videography. Friends say he struggled in school, but not when it came to his passions — video, journalism and the local fire department (he was a member of the West Sayville Fire Department when he died).

Growing up, he was close friends with Trish Bergin, a Suffolk County legislator from East Islip and an anchor/reporter for News 12 from 1993 to 2009.

"I met Glen in seventh grade, [and] we both had summer jobs — I was the lifeguard, and he did pool maintenance at Hidden Pond Park [in Hauppauge]," she said. "We were in junior high together, then went to New York Tech, then TV 55 and News 12 together."

In high school, she remembered Pettit as someone who was a budding "photojournalist but also a scanner kid — always listening to the [police] scanner. He was also a volunteer fireman who'd go out in the middle of the night to take pictures that he'd sell to Newsday the next day. He did this in high school!

"He was one of those guys who, when the alarm sounded, jumped out of his desk and told the teacher it was mandatory that he report for his firefighting duties. You should have seen how many kids wanted to join the fire department after that."

His sister also remembered a "go-getter, always moving a million miles an hour. If there was an event, he was going to get there and film it. He was everywhere."

Former colleagues also described a gifted cameraman. "Glen was an artist of the camera and had a wonderful eye," Nicholson said. "We thought of ourselves as artist cops. That's what drew us to that unit and to each other, and how we gelled as friends and partners."

Taliercio, who got his start at News 12, said his first day on the job in August 1995 was with Pettit to cover the devastating Sunrise fire that burned about 5,000 acres of the pine barrens.

"We were out there — me, a reporter and Glen — we must have done live shots in four or five different locations, and Glen would say, 'We're done,' then we'd follow him to another location, boost the antenna, grab a signal, set up the live shot, ready to go at a different shot. It was literally my trial by fire. I thought, how is he doing this? It was incredible. He was a spectacular photographer, craftwise."

Taliercio went to Ch. 5 in 1998, and in 2000, Pettit joined the NYPD. "We come from a family of officers," said his sister, "and he wanted to join the department forever."

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Taliercio had made his way past a couple of checkpoints to the towers. "Walking up Church Street was a guy in a baseball cap and blue windbreaker, camera down at his side. And as he got closer, I was like, 'Oh my god, it's Glen,' " he said. "It was this very comforting moment in the chaos, this familiar face and someone I respected deeply as a colleague and a person.

"As he approached, he said, 'Jack, this is a terrorist attack. You can't be here,' [but] for whatever reason, I had decided I was going to stick with Glen and went to follow him. As he turned around, he put his hand out: 'No, Jack. Do not follow me. Get two blocks away.'

"It was a Glen I had never experienced before — stern, serious — and in my view, that's what saved my life that day."

Taliercio, 54, left TV not long afterward. He became a nutritionist for the New York Department of Health and lives in western Massachusetts. He's got "two daughters, one a senior, about to turn 18, and my youngest just started high school. They're doing great."

He thinks often about his friend: "There was a numbness for a long time, [but] I'm still allowing myself to feel it."

Nicholson retired from the NYPD, later becoming an actor (he had a supporting role in "Succession"). He also has two daughters, both grown.

"I wish he'd had the opportunity to be a dad" too, said Bergin. "He would have been a great father. He would've really been something."

Over the years, his family launched a number of initiatives in his honor — a scholarship fund, an annual golf tournament, even a street corner named after him (East 21st Street and Second Avenue, in Manhattan). A stretch of Montauk Highway in front of the West Sayville firehouse was also named for Pettit.

"The only thing we want," Kroupa said, "is for Glen to never be forgotten."