Youngstown officer's change of course saves woman from fire
YOUNGSTOWN
Detective Sgt. Ed Kenney decided to go west rather than east Tuesday, and the decision led to him getting a woman out of a burning home.
Kenney, a city patrol supervisor for the South Side, was looking for suspects in a theft from the Market Street Dollar General at about 7 p.m.
Kenney said typically when a crime is committed on the east side of Market, the culprits flee east. But Tuesday, witnesses told police the suspects ran across Market Street and ran west.
So Kenney was driving down Balsam Court looking for them when he spotted smoke and flames coming from the front of a 1749 Gertrude Place home.
Kenney stopped, called the fire department, then knocked on the front door. He got no answer and the more he knocked the greater the smoke became, which was especially strong because of the siding on the porch that was melting from the flames.
“It was that real, toxic, acrid smell,” Kenney said.
Kenney went around the back and was going to kick the back door in when officer John O’Neill arrived and told him a woman ran out the front door. The woman said there was no one else in the home, Kenney said.
Read more about the fire in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.