On Thu, Feb 10 2005 18:00:00 PST Patrick Townson > 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:
>
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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.