Patrolman receives emotional welcome

By Ed Runyan

Two of the three women hurt in the fire also have been released from the hospital.

WARREN — Doug Hipple, the city patrolman who entered a burning house trying to save three women at 368 Bonnie Brae Ave. N.E. in April, made a surprise return home from the hospital Sunday afternoon.

Hipple, 38, who had been hospitalized at Akron Children’s Hospital Burn Center with burns to his lungs, arm, back and ear since the day of the fire, received an emotional welcome from friends, neighbors and fellow city employees about 1 p.m.

Patrolman Brian Crites said he learned only a couple of hours before Hipple returned home that he was going to be released Sunday.

Many of Hipple’s fellow officers were at a motorcycle poker run that started and ended at the Powerhouse Bar And Grille on Mahoning Avenue when Hipple came home.

Officers did have time to arrange for a Warren firetruck and two police cars to greet Hipple in his neighborhood near North Road Elementary School off North Road, Crites said.

Hipple went back to the Akron hospital for treatment Monday and will have to do that daily for a while, Crites added.

Friends thought Hipple might stay at the hospital another month, Crites said, adding that Hipple was ecstatic to be home.

Hipple still has a lot of pain in the burned areas and is groggy from medication, but his burned lungs are getting healthier, and “for him to come home is a huge step,” Crites said. He is walking but is very tired, Crites added.

While on duty, Hipple was flagged down about 3:20 a.m. April 28 by a newspaper carrier who said there was a fire on the porch of a home just north of Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital.

Hipple went into the home with a caretaker for the three intellectually challenged women inside and attempted to lead the women to safety.

The caretaker was able to escape, but Hipple and the three residents became disoriented, went back upstairs and were trapped. They were rescued by firefighters about 20 minutes later, all unconscious and in critical condition.

Karl Ware, workshop director at Trumbull County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disability’s Tony Tomaski Center adult workshop in Niles, where the three women worked, said two of the residents of women, Donna Cassidy, 52, and Melissa Watson, 44, also have been released from the Akron hospital.

Cassidy has been placed in a new group home, and Watson has been placed in a nursing home, Ware said.

The other woman, Sheree Egry, 53, remains in the hospital, Ware said.

runyan@vindy.com