Praying for Good Fortune

Once Again He survived war, robbery, now he's missing at WTC

By Sean Gardiner | STAFF WRITER

September 21, 2001

Armored-car driver Francis Joseph Trombino survived war in a far-off land, a notorious 1981 Westchester shoot-out and was lucky enough to dodge death once again in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Now his loved ones pray he was fortunate enough to live through the attacks that tumbled the Twin Towers.

Trombino, 68, of Clifton, N.J., was guarding a Brink's truck, parked on the B1 level of Tower One's Bank of America delivery bay on the morning of Sept. 11. Three men in his crew were upstairs making a money drop. Law-enforcement sources say Brink's has reported that the truck had $14 million in it.

Trombino, called "Joe" by his friends at home and "Jack" by co-workers, was with the truck when a hijacked jet crashed into the tower about 80 stories above him at 8:48 a.m. He was still in the truck 18 minutes later when a second plane crashed into Tower Two.

At 9:15 a.m., Trombino radioed Brink's offices to say a police officer told him to move the truck because the building was shaking and unstable, his daughter Bo Kirby told Newsday yesterday.

He hasn't been heard from since.

Trombino's family doesn't think he stayed because of the money.

"If he stayed," Kirby said, "he stayed because he thought his crew was coming back."

Trombino's three partners were able to get out of Tower One before it collapsed. Kirby said that if anyone could survive 10 days trapped underground, it's her father.

He has been a Brink's driver for more than 30 years, and he missed the 1993 attack on the Trade Center only because he finished a delivery minutes before the blast. Trombino, who served in the Korean War, was so badly wounded in the Nanuet robbery carried out by leftist radicals that his arm was nearly shot off.

On Oct. 20, 1981, Trombino and his Brink's partner, Peter Page, were ambushed by members of the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers as they were coming out of Nanuet National Bank carrying $839,000.

Trombino's partner was killed. The robbers later killed two Nyack police officers at a roadblock.

It took Trombino two years to recuperate. But he eventually returned, not quite with full use of his arm, to the job he loved.

"With all that he has been through, it's something that he thought about every day - that he was going to be robbed or face some type of disaster," Kirby said. "But again, that was his job."

"If anyone could survive something like this, it's him," his daughter said, "if he's in the truck and there's some type of food source, a restaurant or canteen truck nearby."

Marvin Moss, a spokesman for Brink's, confirmed that one Brink's worker is missing but said he could not comment further.

Kirby said Trombino's family hopes to hear from the police officer who asked their father, who was dressed in a blue Brink's shirt, black pants and was carrying a gun on a hip holster, to move - or from anyone else who saw him at the trade center that morning.

"We need to get a better idea of what happened to him," Kirby said. "Did he stay with the truck, did he get out of the truck? It would just comfort us to know what happened to him."

Staff writer Jessica Kowal contributed to this story.