Published: April 06, 2007 10:49 pm            

It’s time to play ‘You Pick the Hero’

You know how you hear a story and wish it was true? This week, the Herald encountered just that three times over — leading us to scratch our heads as we decide which one to believe.

It all comes in the wake of a structure fire that broke out shortly after 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at 514 Sixth Ave. South — a duplex, with two apartments.

Soon after, local television news crews were reporting that James Rowan broke down the door on the first floor, ran inside the burning building and rescued the residents.

On Thursday, the Herald was visited by a neighbor who lives next to the burning house, Jon Unger, who said that Rowan didn’t save those people. Unger said he heard the explosion, went outside, saw flames coming from the building and called 911. He added he heard a bystander yelling that there was someone inside. Unger stated that Rowan did break down the door, but said that he (Unger) and his girlfriend, Laura Bickford, ran inside the home, found a female resident and got her out of the house. Unger said the woman was in shock, so the couple brought her to their home.

“He said he carried that woman out and he didn’t,” Unger said.

Unger recounted that Rowan did not save the man inside the home either, but said the man exited on his own.

“We don’t want any notoriety for it, we just want to set the record straight,” Unger said.

Not 15 minutes later, just before deadline, the Herald received a phone call from Shane Brestan saying that he works with Don Gray, who was working on his car in the garage at the time the fire broke out, just a few houses down the street. Brestan stated Gray was telling the story at work of how he went inside the home to save the woman and man. Brestan said he got goosebumps from the story and that “We need more people in this world like him.”

There you have it folks. We’ve received calls from people wondering why the hero story — presumably the first one — wasn’t published in the newspaper.

It didn’t seem to be the right thing to do considering fire department officials have told us that they don’t know if anyone helped get the residents out of the house, since what reportedly happened took place before firefighters arrived.

With three stories of heroism all in conflict with each other — there were two victims and three heroic acts, none of which include a hint of rescue help from the others who claim to be heroes — it would appear that we would get into a situation where each story printed would be negated by the next telephone call.

So that’s what we know.

We’re now going to leave it up to the readers to decide who should be credited with saving these people.

        

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