Police are investigating after a 76-year-old man is beaten and tied up during a home invasion robbery. NY1’s Natalie Duddridge has the story.

"I was in bed. They wake me up, they went through the window. Boom! They went through the back, they went through the window," said Tony Puzio, the victim of a home invasion in Ozone Park, Queens on Saturday.

Puzio arrived home from the hospital after being treated for injuries sustained in a violent home invasion Saturday morning. It happened at 101st Street near 97th Avenue. The 76-year-old veteran says he woke up to find a man in a skeleton mask yelling.

"'Where's the money, where's the money, where's the money,' that's all he said. I don't have money, I had $25 in my wallet,"Puzio said. "I tried to [punch], you know, he started punching, he hit me once over here with the gun and then punched me, one time with the gun, three times with the hand."

Investigators say a man broke into the home around 6:15 a.m. Saturday by going in the second-floor bedroom window using a ladder. They say he tied Puzio up and pistol whipped him and that another man and woman entered the home as well.

Puzio was left tied upstairs but was eventually able to free his legs and came outside called for help. That's when sanitation crews happened to be passing by.

"He runs in front of the truck with his hands bound and his nose is bleeding. It was like a little crooked. I hop out the truck to go help him, to see what's going on, and he explained to me that he was just robbed," said Michael Bermudez, one of the sanitation workers who found Puzio.

"I felt so heartbroken for the poor guy, seeing him like that, in you know, the situation that he was in, and that somebody could do that to him," said sanitation worker Joseph Felicetti.

Puzio was treated for non-critical injuries, including cuts and bruises on his face, at Jamaica Hospital. He says robbers took a television, cell phone and his wallet and then fled.

Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia released a statement praising the workers for taking quick action.

"I'm not gonna say I'm a hero, I just dialed 911, anything, yeah, anything that anyone should do," Bermudez said.

And tonight, Puzio is thanking them. "Good guys, good guys," he said.

To add to the ordeal, once Puzio went to the hospital, police locked the top door of his unit. So, when he came home, he didn't have a key to get inside. It took him an extra two hours.