A 75-year-old man who died in an Owings Mills apartment fire early Tuesday has been identified by Baltimore County police.
Police identified the victim on Thursday as John Clark Johnson. He lived in the apartment on Tricount Court that caught fire early Tuesday morning.
Johnson was retired and lived at the apartment with his wife Elizabeth, said the couple's neighbor, Vanessa Phin. Elizabeth Johnson was also rescued from the second floor apartment, she said, and taken to Johns Hopkins Bayview Burn Center for serious injuries. Two others residents also went to the hospital had non life-threatening injuries police said.
"He's been he's been here a long time. When we first moved in, they [management] said, 'You will like this building because of the nice people,'" said Phin, who moved to the Painters Mill Apartments four years ago.
She said Johnson could often be found sitting outside the building because he told neighbors he would get bored and liked to be around people. He was friendly and would always greet neighbors, she said, recalling his "deep-based" voice.
Phin said her neighbor would often say he missed working, but could often be heard saying "thank the lord I'm alive."
No matter how often neighbors would offer to help them with groceries, he refused, preferring to be independent.
His wife would often be out on their balcony, which she turned into a verdant garden, Phin said.
The two women who drove themselves to the hospital for smoke inhalation were cousins of Johnson's, Phin said. One had activated the building's fire alarm and stayed inside knocking on doors to make sure others got out of their units.
Phin said residents were allowed to return back into the building about two hours after the fire. She said she hopes building management will have the smoke smell cleaned from the carpets.
"Every time you smell it, you think of what happened," she said.
Neighbors have put flowers on "Mr. John's" car and hung an angel on the couple's apartment door, she said.
Fire investigators are still working to determine a cause. Police said they do not believe there is anything suspicious about the fire.
Clark is the second fire fatality in the county this year, a spokesman said.
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