Toronto firefighter who wound up in California might have had head injury

A Toronto fire captain who was found at a California airport six days after vanishing from a New York state ski slope likely sustained some sort of head trauma along his puzzling journey across the country, American authorities said Wednesday.

Constantinos (Danny) Filippidis was unable to provide officers with many details about his route from Lake Placid, New York, to the Sacramento, California, airport other than that he believed he travelled most of the way in a transport truck and was not the victim of any crime, the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department said a day after the firefighter was found.

“When we asked him how he got here, he couldn’t remember much,” Sgt. Shaun Hampton said. “He was skiing and that’s what he last remembered. He had a significant amount of trouble remembering what occurred over the last few days.”

Filippidis, a 49-year-old captain with Toronto Fire Services, was on an annual ski trip with friends and colleagues when he disappeared from Whiteface Mountain.

Frank Ramagnano, president of the Toronto Professional Firefighters’ Association, said Filippidis had lingered behind his friends to do one more run on the slopes before he vanished at 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 7.

His disappearance triggered a massive multi-agency search involving members of the U.S. Department of Environmental Conservation, New York state police, Homeland Security, U.S. border officials and volunteer Toronto firefighters, all of whom spent a combined 7,000 hours combing the rugged mountain terrain.

On Tuesday, Filippidis showed up at the Sacramento airport, where he contacted police at about 9:30 a.m. using a newly purchased cellphone and identifying himself by name as someone missing from New York.

Hampton said police were initially wary of his story until they checked a national database of missing persons and found the report on his disappearance.

Officers found Filippidis wearing snow pants, a ski jacket and winter boots. Hampton said the sight of the man clad in winter attire was nearly as striking as the “odd” story he told officers.

“It’s a bit chilly here, but it’s not that cold,” he said.

Filippidis told police he did not recall the circumstances of his departure from New York, but recalled travelling to Sacramento in a big truck. He could not provide details of the vehicle or its driver. He told police, however, that he suspected he had suffered some sort of head trauma.