TRENTON, New Jersey (NJ.com) – Thirty-two years have passed since Susan Woods-Lubitsky’s brother, Trenton firefighter Joseph Woods, was killed in the line of duty.
After Woods and fellow firefighter Robert Mizopalko died in August 1986 battling a three-alarm blaze at the city bar Shenanigans Saloon, their names were added to the base of the city’s Iron Fireman statue, which was built in 1892 and stood outside city hall since 1910.
But in April 2013, the 126-year-old statue was destroyed in an act of vandalism. The incident was a “slap in the face” to city firefighters, then-fire union president Wayne Wolk told The Times of Trenton in 2013.