Cops treated after responding to CO2 call

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The occupants of a Pine Hollow home and four officers were treated early Wednesday for high exposures to carbon monoxide.

The officers were released from St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital after being treated but the two occupants of the home in the 3100 block of Pine Hollow, a 39-year-old woman and 69-year-old man, were in stable condition and being treated in hyperbaric chambers for their exposure to the gas, according to reports.

Police were called to the home just after 2 a.m. after a woman called and asked for an ambulance, but she did not sound coherent before she hung up.

Reports said when officers arrived they could hear voices inside but no one came to the door so they got permission to break in the door. As soon as they did, they could smell exhaust fumes and found the man naked on the floor, covered in sweat and lying in his own vomit. The woman was found in a bedroom also heavily sweating. Neither of the two could communicate, reports said.

After police carried the occupants out, officer Kenneth Garling spotted an open back door and ran into the basement, where a gas generator was running. He then turned the generator off. The generator was the source of the fumes, reports said.

Reports said firefighters arrived and entered wearing their breathing gear to check for anyone else, but there was no one left inside. Firefighters put on their masks when carbon monoxide readings are at nine parts per million. The readings in the house were 465 parts per million.

The officers who went inside were treated with oxygen by paramedics then taken to the hospital to be examined further. Besides Garling, they are officers Timothy Edwards, Jeffrey Savnik and Rob DiMaiolo.

Reports said a generator was being used because the home has no utilities.