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Authorities in Pennsylvania have filed charges against a 911 dispatcher who refused to send an ambulance to the rural home of a woman, who died the next day.
Kelly Titchenell called 911 to report that her mother needed medical attention. The dispatcher, identified as Leon Price, 50, began to question Titchenell about whether her mother, Diania Kronk, 54, would cooperate with paramedics and agree to go to the hospital.
Titchenell told Price that she was about ten minutes from her mother's house and assured him that she would make sure her mother went to the hospital.
"She will be, 'cause I'm on my way there, so she's going, or she's going to die," Titchenell told Price.
"She's going to go, she's going to go," Titchenell assured him. "Cause if not, she's going to die; there's nothing else."
Price did not send an ambulance and told Titchenell to call back when she got to her mother's home.
"I'm sorry," Titchenell said, and Price replied: "No, don't be sorry, ma'am. Just call me when you get out there, OK?"
When Titchenell arrived at her mother's house, she was naked on the porch. Titchenell convinced her to put on a robe, but she couldn't call 911 because there was no cell phone service, and she could not locate her mother's landline phone.
"This is unheard of to me. I mean, they'll send an ambulance for anything," Titchenell said. "And here I am telling this guy that my mom's going to die. It's, like, her death, and she doesn't get an ambulance."
Kronk, who was bleeding internally, died that night and was found the next day by another relative.
After reviewing the transcript of the 2020 911 call, officials decided to charge Price with involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and official oppression and obstruction.
"We all deserve equal protections, and we all deserve access to medical services," Greene County District Attorney Dave Russo told the Associated Press in an interview. "I have a major concern as to the safety of the community in regards to this."