IN THE LAST WEEK
Ican’t believe she’s alive.” That’s what Jeffrey Yates, Washington County’s director of emergency services, said moments after Megan Angelone was rescued from a collapsed building in downtown Washington Wednesday. Adding to the amazement, the very refrigerator that fell on and trapped the young woman for nearly 10 hours was largely credited with saving her.
More than 100 emergency workers responded when much of the three-story apartment building on Main Street fell in a mass of bricks and debris. The building’s owner said the incident came as a shock, but that was hardly the case with building tenants who had been noticing cracks in walls and unstable stairs. “I was telling my buddy, ‘Someday this place is going to collapse,’ ” said Edward Cook. City of Washington officials had cited landlord Mark Russo numerous times for building code violations but said they had no idea the structure would actually tumble. It created an unusually complex and tense day-long rescue effort, as the precarious remains of the building threatened to fall again, risking the lives of rescuers as well as Ms. Angelone.
In the end, they carved a hole in the wall of an adjacent building to get her out with a stretcher after using air bags to lift the refrigerator from her. She required hospital treatment only for minor injuries, because the refrigerator had kept the weight of massive debris from fallen floors off of her. A longtime Butler County mystery had an illuminating but disturbing final twist more than 500 miles away in North Dartmouth, Mass. In a backyard there, authorities discovered the buried body of fugitive Donald Eugene Webb, a longtime suspect in the 1980 murder of Saxonburg police Chief Gregory Adams.
The discovery came at the home of Webb’s former wife, Lillian, who had been granted immunity from prosecution if she revealed the whereabouts of Webb, who had been sought by authorities since the day Chief Adams was shot and killed during a traffic stop.
The police chief’s widow, Mary Ann Adams Jones, had only scorn for Ms. Webb. The chief’s survivors had sued Ms. Webb over suspicions she long ago began hiding Webb from authorities in a concealed room on her property, but the suit and threats of criminal prosecution were dropped when Ms. Webb agreed to tell authorities what happened to her husband.
“Why would she do that? Why would she hide him? Why would she bury him in the backyard? All I
feel is anger,” Ms. Jones said after finally learning the truth. “My husband died and he never got to see his kids grow up or meet his grandchildren. There is no justice.”