Man Rescues Roommate from Apartment Fire

James McCarthy came home to his East Haven Ledgeview apartment this afternoon to find the upstairs rooms swallowed in smoke and flames.

McCarthy said he knew that his roommate was in the house so he rushed upstairs to try and find him.

“I wasn’t leaving the house until I found him,” he said. “When I ran upstairs, it was pitch-black.”

McCarthy said he did not see his roommate, Anthony Perricone, until he stepped on him in the hallway in front of the bedroom. Then, McCarthy said his next-door neighbor, Peter Santino, showed up and together the two were able to pull Perricone – a “big guy” – out of the apartment and to safety.

“He’s burnt up,” McCarthy said of his roommate of two years.

“He was in bad shape,” said Santino, who was sitting at his computer next door in apartment D-10 when he heard screams that D-9 was ablaze. “I thought they were cuts, but they were burns on his leg,” he said of his neighbor’s condition.

Perricone was transported to Yale-New Haven Hospital, said McCarthy.

After the roommate rescue and once the East Haven Fire Department arrived, the fire was extinguished within 20 minutes, said Assistant Fire Chief Chuck Licata. The call came in at 2:16 p.m., he said. 

“He had some extensive burns,” said Licata of Perricone.

Licata said state fire marshals are investigating the cause of the fire.