'I don't know why you're freaking out,' a 911 dispatcher told a woman minutes before she drowned

[Judi Lynn]

By Hannah Knowles August 31 at 5:08 PM

Time was running out for Debra Stevens. But the 911 dispatcher didn’t seem concerned.

“Somebody save me!” Stevens screamed as the water level crept up inside her car, which was stranded in floodwater.

“I don’t know why you’re freaking out,” the dispatcher, Donna Reneau, responded.

“I’m going to die,” Stevens cried later.

“Yeah, I know,” Reneau said.

Stevens did die, but only after the dispatcher told the Fort Smith, Ark., woman to “shut up,” chastised her for worrying that the phone call would cut off and berated her for driving into water — water the frantic flood victim swore she had not seen.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/08/31/i-dont-know-why-youre-freaking-out-dispatcher-told-woman-minutes-before-she-drowned



'Shut up': Woman drowns while being scolded on phone by 911 dispatcher
In chilling audio released by the Fort Smith Police Department, 47-year-old Debbie Stevens can be heard panicking over the phone as she pleaded for help after calling 911, but was met instead with callous from now-former dispatcher Donna Reneau.

POSTMEDIA NEWS Updated: August 31, 2019

https://montrealgazette.com/news/world/shut-up-woman-drowns-while-being-scolded-on-phone-by-911-dispatcher/wcm/b67760f7-9848-4b39-b0e1-f5864848cb21

[cilla4progress]

1. 911 dispatcher hung up on me

last week! Husband passed out as I drove him to ER after a motorcycle wreck. He awoke and started arguing with me about calling an ambulance. That's when she hung up. He was admitted to ICU with 7 broken ribs and lacerated spleen.

[Cha]

7. I'm so sorry, cilla!

[Vinca]

10. I hope you filed a complaint about that.

[Judi Lynn]

2. There is a recording of Debbie Stevens, begging Donna Renea for help at the Wash. Post link. Sad.n/t

[SunSeeker]

3. What a horrible way to die. May Ms. Reneau never know peace.

[appleannie1]

4. I was dispatcher before 911. I guarantee that is not how I handled calls.

[barbtries]

5. that this woman died,

not entirely alone which is sad enough, but accompanied by the scorn and berating of a stranger, will cause greater suffering for her loved ones. there should be a consequence for this behavior. it sickens me. that poor woman.

[BeyondGeography]

6. Well said, barbtries

The cruelty of this incident runs very deep.

[True Blue American]

8. A Trumpster?

[no_hypocrisy]

9. This is inhumane.

I used to work as a midnight shift operator at an answering service.

Twice, I got to prove myself. The first time, a patient was having a heart attack at 9:30 p.m. and I found his cardiologist, who was out shopping. I helped to save a life.

The second time, a patient called his psychiatrist at 4:30 a.m. He told me he wanted to tell his doctor goodbye b/c he was about to kill himself. Not being trained in emergency situations, I kept the caller on the line. I asked him for his call back number. How old he was. What he did for a living. I got him calmed down, put him on hold, got the doctor on the phone, patched them together, and thought it was over. It wasn't. Three minutes later, the doctor called me to say that the caller was an "ex-patient" and he wanted nothing to do with him. I explained to the doctor that unless something were done, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I hung, called the police, gave them the patient's callback number and they traced his location. They found him before he hurt himself and he was in the psyche ward of a local hospital when I came in for my shift later that night.

That's how you handle people in crisis.

[Vinca]

11. Maybe some people have better instincts than others, I don't know. Your handling of both

instances was what everyone in such a position should aspire to. I was a dispatcher at a police department before I became a cop and I remember being on the phone for the better part of an hour with a suicidal woman in a town about 15 miles away. It took that long to locate a local cop to handle the situation. You really have to use the gift of gab when encountering situations. Talk, talk, talk until you can get someone to care for them. That dispatcher needs some serious training in how to be a decent human being.

[lark]

12. Lock her up!

Don't know which legal condition she met, accessory to murder maybe? She needs to go to jail as well as be fired -- now! When she gets out, she needs to work for the rest of her life, paying the family for the woman she allowed to die so heartlessly.

[LisaL]

13. You can't lock someone up for being rude.

Accessory to murder requires there be a murder. This was an accidental drowning. As for being fired, she resigned. So it's not possible to fire her because she no longer works there.

[lark]

14. Could she have saved her and didn't try?

That's what this seems to be saying. If I got that wrong and her death was not preventable. well you can't fire someone who quit. Just hope this follows her and has consequences. Hate is a real thing and this ass seems consumed by it.

Edit - fixed typo

[JI7]

15. why take this type of job if you have such an attitude

and there are some jobs where these things are less excusable.

[Hestia]

16. She'll be working for ICE next week - they all seem to be sociopaths, what's one more...

[ do I really need to use the sarcasm emoji? ]

[treestar]

17. Reading the article, they were inundated with calls

the flooding was affecting a lot of people, so likely she was overwhelmed and the lady was screaming and not listening, so she didn't get the instructions to climb onto the top of the car. Just shows to save yourself, you have to stay calm. No luxury of panicking in those situations. Maybe the dispatcher should not have snapped like that but then how do we know we'd handle it better?

[markpkessinger]

18. I listened to the entire 22-minute 911 call . . .

To be sure, the dispatcher could have handled things much better than she did. Certainly, berating the caller for her predicament was uncalled for and grossly unprofessional. But beyond being more empathetic towards the caller, what could this dispatcher have done differently that would have resulted in a different outcome? We need to separate the outcome, over which the 911 operator had no control, from the operator's handling of the call. Apart from a couple moments in the recording where the operator made some poor choices, mostly what I hear is a 911 operator focused on trying to calm the caller down, and trying NOT to feed into the caller's panic, so she can obtain the information she needs to obtain in order to help the woman.

Caller: I'm drowning!
911 operator: No, you're not.

As opposed to:

Caller: I'm drowning!
911 operator: Yeah, it kiund of looks like you probably are, but let me focus on holding your hand while it happens rather than trying to get someone there to help you.

Get real, folks! What the hell was she supposed to say?

Being more empathetic in this situation might have been a comfort to the caller, but it wouldn't have altered the outcome. The operator had an extraordinarily difficult job to do., on a night when emergency personnel were stretched beyond their capacity Maybe there were some things she could have handed differently and better than she did. But her principal focus was in the right place. Ask yourself this: if you were in the caller's shoes, which would you want: a 911 operator whose main focus was on comforting youj, or a 911 operator who was doing what she needed to do in order to give rescuers the best shot at saving you? Yeah, I thought so.

Sorry, but it is beyond shameful to vilify the 911 operator for this.