Urgent 911 call takes 20 hours to answer. The story and the 911 audio from North Port, Florida.
It was an urgent call for help that didn’t receive an urgent response.
After Brian Wood, 55, crashed his pickup into a pole on Friday, he got out and sat down nearby. A motorist saw him on the ground and called 911, but since he couldn’t remember the exact name of the road, the North Port Police Dept. (NPPD) call-taker never dispatched an officer.
Twenty hours later, when officers finally arrived after a second 911 call, they found Wood had eventually died from his injuries.
“I’m trying to think if it’s Lovebird or Lovesong,” Mark Minisci Jr. told the 911 operator, trying to remember the name of the street. He even provided directions.
But the crash was on Lovering Ave., and the frustrated call-taker told Minisci that the NPPD system “doesn’t work like that” and she “(had) to have something.”
Chief Terry Lewis took responsibility for the mistake on Tuesday, calling it either human error or a policy problem.
“A police officer,” Lewis said, “should be sent to talk to people…we need to do everything we can to make sure these mistakes don’t happen.”
Part of the problem was that the 911 operator from the Sarasota Sheriff’s Office never told the NPPD call-taker what the emergency was, but Lewis said she should have asked better questions. He says there is nothing wrong with the 911 system.
The call-taker is on paid administrative leave, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. Lewis says the investigation should also help his department prevent similar problems in the future.
