The New York Times/1925/12/14/Horse Smashes Door; Saves Two at Fire
Policeman, Unable to Get into Burning Bungalow, Backs Animal Through Barrier.
A bungalow fire at Canarsie Landing shortly before midnight destroyed three in a row of five bungalows and made fifteen people homeless, two of whom barely escaped with their lives.
Orion Bogart and his wife, Anna, in whose home the fire was started by the explosion of a lamp, owe their lives to the speed and strength of Recount, the police horse ridden by Patrolman John Leonard. Leonard saw the flames when he was half a mile away. He galloped to the bungalows, arriving before the firemen. Jumping down, he tried the door of the Bogart home, which was nearly enveloped in flames. He could not open it. Quickly he turned Recount until the horse's hips were against the door.
"Back," he ordered, and Recount crashed through the door.
Leonard leaped inside and found the Bogarts just waking up and choking in the smoke. He seized and hurried them out to safety. Then the policeman awakened George Hoffman, his wife, and nine children in the next bungalow and got them out. From the third bungalow Conrad Smith and James McGreery were rescued by firemen who arrived under Battalion Chief Michael Shanahan from a grass fire a mile away in the Canarsie marshes, where they had been engaged since early in the evening.