Phillip E. Johnson, 12, schoolboy, died attempting to help save Terry G. and Ricky L. Peak, each 8, from suffocation, Cleveland, Ohio, October 6, 1968. Phillip was spending the night with the Peak family when fire broke out in the bedroom he occupied with another boy on the second floor of the two-story frame dwelling. Phillip awoke, noted the flames, and roused the other boy, who told him to go downstairs and inform other members of the family. The boy said he would waken Terry and Ricky, his twin brothers, who were in another bedroom on the second floor. Phillip, saying he would return to help remove the twins, descended a stairway which led to the outside. After entering the first floor briefly to report the situation to persons there, Phillip ran back upstairs, where flames were spreading and all rooms were filled with dense smoke. By then the other boy had taken Terry and Ricky out onto a second-floor porch. Persons on the ground floor ran outside. Terry, Ricky, and the other boy were aided from the porch to the ground. Calls to Phillip to go to a window and jump elicited only his reply that he could not do so. Fireman arrived. They found Phillip in a second-floor bedroom, where he had died of suffocation.
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