Jul 26, 2025 By Mike Jones 4 min read

A caregiver helped to save a paralyzed man while trying to direct his parents to safety during an early morning house fire in Fayette County last week that killed a woman.

Tony Masterbray had just arrived for his shift about midnight on July 16 to provide overnight care for the paralyzed man, who is in his early 50s, can’t speak and breathes with the help of oxygen, at the home on Miles Road in Dunbar Township.

About 1:30 a.m., a smoke alarm alerted the family to a fire, prompting Masterbray to leave his client’s room to check on the situation. He soon came upon the mother standing in the doorway of her bedroom with fire behind her. He directed her to leave the house, but she instead went into the living room where she apparently collapsed in a reclining chair.

Using his training as a former Monarch volunteer firefighter, Masterbray closed the bedroom door and used a towel to seal off the threshold to keep smoke from entering the rest of the house. He and the father then went into the paralyzed man’s room and tried to get him into a wheelchair, but Masterbray’s back gave out due to an old injury. At that point, the smoke was hovering just above the bed and the father went out to check on his wife in the living room, where she appeared to be unresponsive.

Unable to get the paralyzed man out of the bedroom, they pulled him from the bed onto the floor, and Masterbray laid next to him as the father opened the bedroom window to get fresh air in.

“He said, ‘You boys are going to die here,'” Masterbray recalled the father telling him.

“We’re going to be OK,” Masterbray responded. “We’re not going to die in here. I’m going to save your son for you.”

Masterbray laid on the floor with the man, sharing oxygen back and forth as it felt like an eternity for firefighters to arrive.

“There were a few moments where there was fear,” said Masterbray, who is also a former registered nurse. “But I couldn’t let the father see my fear. And I couldn’t let the client feel that fear.”

Firefighters soon arrived and carried the paralyzed man and mother out of the house, and then came back for Masterbray, who began feeling the effects from the smoke. The three family members were flown separately by medical helicopter to UPMC Mercy hospital in Pittsburgh for treatment, although the woman – identified in an obituary as 73-year-old Barbara Diane Woods – died July 18.

Masterbray was taken to WVU Uniontown Hospital for smoke inhalation and treatment on his ailing back, and he was released a day after the fire. The father, who was identified in the woman’s obituary as William Woods, was released and is now “coping” with the loss of his wife and home, Masterbray said. The client, identified in his mother’s obituary as Keith Toby Woods, will soon be transferred to a “stepdown unit” to help with his recovery and special needs, Masterbray said.

State police have not released any information into the cause of the fire, although it’s not believed to be suspicious.

Masterbray, 74 of Uniontown, said he had no qualms doing everything in his power to save the client and his parents. He went to high school with William Woods and has worked as an overnight caregiver for Keith Woods for 15 years, bringing him very close to the family.

“My concern was for my client and his family,” Masterbray said before pausing for a moment. “My family.”