First, a scream, then 2 cops to the rescue

A woman's scream pierced the quiet night air as smoke poured from an old three-story duplex in Germantown Thursday night. Two people were trapped inside, too petrified to move.

As fate would have it, two veteran Philadelphia police officers arrived at the scene before firefighters could.

The cops looked at each other as the building belched thick black smoke. The woman continued to shriek about the couple stranded on the second floor.

Officers Brian Pitts and Matthew Conaway knew they had nothing to protect themselves. No masks, no gloves, no jackets - just a flashlight and a pair of iron wills.

They charged into the burning building, felt their way through the darkness and emerged 10 minutes later as heroes, with two extremely grateful people in tow.

This sort of thing - cops running through smoldering buildings, ushering people to safety - doesn't happen every day.

But as Pitts and Conaway see it, they were just doing their jobs.

"If we had to do it again, we would. We wouldn't even think about it," said Pitts, who works with Conaway in Nicetown's 39th District. "Every time we go to work, we try to save somebody."

The circumstances surrounding this particular rescue, though, were anything but routine.

Pitts, a four-year police veteran who is also a Navy reservist, was off duty as he drove down Wayne Avenue near Queen Lane about 8:30 p.m. Thursday.

He was heading towards the 39th District headquarters to drop off some paperwork, but he hit his brakes when a panic-stricken woman flagged him down.

"I looked to my right and saw the building on fire," said Pitts, 36. "I called 911 and they said fire rescue was en route, but I still went in and starting getting people out."

Pitts thought he had evacuated the duplex when the woman frantically told him that two people were still trapped on the second floor.

At that point, Conaway - who was on duty - arrived. He grabbed a flashlight and both men stormed into the building.

"The visibility was zero," said Conaway, 40, a 14-year veteran. "We couldn't see where we were going at all."

They found a terrified man and a woman, both in their 20s. "She was screaming," Pitts said, "but we just tried to calm her down. I said, 'We're going to get you out of here.' "

The hero cops stayed in the building and searched for other occupants even after they got the young couple to safety. Thankfully, no one else was trapped.

Pitts, Conaway and the lucky couple were treated for smoke inhalation. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, officials said.

"We had each other's backs. I wasn't going to leave him, and he wasn't going to leave me," Conaway said yesterday outside the 39th District's headquarters, 22nd Street and Hunting Park Avenue.

"Pitts and Conaway are two of the best officers we have in the 39th," said their commander, Capt. Stephen Glenn.

"They've distinguished themselves in the past with their efforts to assist the community. " *