Recovering Hero Mourns Lost Friends

Oakton Alumnus Rushed Into Burning House and Saved 3

It wasn't quite 6 a.m. on Saturday, and Timothy M. Cocrane couldn't sleep. So he took a walk, and he became a hero.

Cocrane, a junior at Longwood University and a resident of the Oak Hill area of Fairfax County, meandered toward a friend's house near campus and discovered the second floor in flames. He kicked down the front door, dashed up the stairs and saved three people, though two other friends perished in the fire.

Cocrane, 21, suffered second- and third-degree burns in the fire and spent the next four days in the hospital. He was released yesterday and returned home with his family, but he plans to travel back to Longwood, 60 miles west of Richmond in Farmville, Va., today to meet with school officials and attend a memorial service for the two friends who died.

University officials are calling him a hero, but Cocrane rejects the label. "I kind of deny all claims to being a hero," Cocrane said yesterday. "I refer to it as being a good brother. I can't deny that I probably did save three lives. But it's hard to call yourself a hero when you lose two very important people in your life."

Cocrane is an Oakton High School graduate and a math major at Longwood, a school of about 3,700 undergraduates. A former soccer player and cross-country runner at Oakton, he said he hopes to become an athletic trainer after graduating.

Graduation will come free of charge, Longwood officials said. "We will be picking up his tuition," said Dennis Sercombe, a university spokesman. Patricia P. Cormier, Longwood's president, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "We will take care of him. His praises should be sung to the hills."

The cause of the fire has not been determined, Farmville Fire Chief Tim McKay said. The fatalities were the first fire deaths in the town of 7,000 in more than a decade. McKay said they "hit particularly hard for us as a [volunteer] department, because probably 75 percent of our department are students, who all at least knew some of the victims."

Cocrane lives on campus and said he just couldn't get to sleep Friday night and Saturday morning. Finally, as dawn approached, he decided to head to his friend and fraternity brother Ed Cunningham's house on First Avenue, where two other people lived. "Usually there's something going on at the house," Cocrane said.

When he turned the corner onto First Avenue, a porch on the second floor of the house was engulfed in flames. "I don't think I've ever run as fast as I did then," he said.

Cocrane had a cellphone, but instead of calling, he took action. He knew not to touch a hot doorknob, so he kicked in the weakened front door, and "I just ran in."

The first floor was vacant. He ran up the stairs to his friend's room, yelling warnings, then kicked down Cunningham's door. But a blast of smoke and flames answered him, said Cocrane's father, Richard Cocrane. Richard Cocrane said firefighters told him that Cunningham, a 22-year-old senior, was found in his bed and probably never awoke.

Also sleeping in the house was Byron Jamerson, 21, who was visiting from Appomattox, where he and Cunningham grew up together. He also died. A service for the two longtime friends will be today at Appomattox County High School.

Tim Cocrane ran next to the rooms of former students Scott Freer and Daniel Yates Jr. and also found fellow student Samantha Fulton of Great Falls. Freer kicked out his window and jumped to the ground, Richard Cocrane said.

Tim Cocrane and Yates then jumped out of Yates's window and helped catch Fulton as she jumped out. Fulton and Freer were treated for minor injuries at Southside Community Hospital in Farmville, but Cocrane and Yates were flown to Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond. Yates was released Sunday.

Richard Cocrane said he and his wife were in Rhode Island on Saturday morning when they got a phone call at 7 a.m. from their son's cellphone. "He's never awake at this hour," Richard Cocrane thought. But it was someone calling on his son's cellphone to say he'd been burned in a fire.

His parents rushed to Richmond, where they found 50 Longwood students lined up outside the hospital's burn unit to offer support. The decision was made not to tell Tim immediately that two of his friends had died, so as not to traumatize him further while he recovered from smoke inhalation and burns.

But his recovery went quickly, Richard Cocrane said, and "he took it quietly. I call him the reluctant hero. The first thing he thinks of is that he lost his friends."

Tim Cocrane acknowledged that he isn't usually up walking at 6 a.m., and he has thought about how he wound up at his friend's house at dawn. "I've been asking myself that," he said. "God just put me there at that moment."