TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Man Dies Waiting for 911 to Arrive

Re: Man Dies Waiting for 911 to Arrive

Marcus Didius Falco (falco_marcus_didius@yahoo.co.uk)
Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:38:58 -0500

On Thu, Feb 10 2005 18:00:00 PST Patrick Townson
<ptownson@telecom-digest.org> > wrote about:
Man Dies Waiting for 911 to Arrive

> -- Suit alleges dispatcher let man die in car --

> This story from our TD-Extra pages tells of a man with a cellular

> phone registered in Dyer, Indiana (where he lived) who died in

> his car (and was found in the car dead a few weeks later) in a
> parking garage in Saulk Village, Illinois. Saulk Village (a far
> south suburb of Chicago) sits on the Illinois/Indiana state line
> right 'across the street' from Dyer, Indiana. It appears the 911
> dispatcher for Saulk Village (area code 708)did not know why she
> was getting a call from an area code 219 number. The man called
> from his automobile saying he thought he was having a heart attack;
> the 911 dispatcher did not deal with it correctly. The man died
> while waiting for an ambulance to show up (it never did show up)
> and several weeks later they found his body in his car where it
> had been parked. The family is suing the Village of Saulk Village
> for damages.

> See the full story at:
> http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/02100002aaa0485f.upi&Sys=ptownson&Type=News&Filter=Front%20Page&Fid=FRONTPAG

This certainly can happen, but, IMnotsoHO, it's the fault of the 911
operator. I often get 911 connections from the wrong operator -- the
wrong county or even the wrong state. (And a 911 operator certainly
can't assume the location of a cell phone from its area code!) In my
opinion, once the operator figures out where I am -- or at least that I
am not in his/her jurisdiction, I am relatively quickly transferred to
the 911 operator in the correct jurisdiction, even if it's in a
neighboring state. After all, when we're near a boundary we have no
control over which tower will pick up our signal.

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