A Toronto teen lay dying while a 911 caller was on hold. Now, the city is promising a review
CBC
The city of Toronto will review an incident where a 911 caller was put on hold for almost seven minutes while a teenage boy was dying from a gunshot wound, the mayor and a top paramedic said on Tuesday.
The 15-year-old boy died in hospital after being shot Saturday night in the Emmett Avenue and Jane Street area.
One caller on the scene waited six minutes and 43 seconds to speak with a 911 operator, Toronto police confirmed.
Mayor Olivia Chow said that wait is "not acceptable."
"People need help immediately when they call. Every moment counts," Chow told reporters at a news conference.
Toronto is in the process of hiring 90 more 911 operators to lower call wait times, which have ballooned in recent years but have been improving in recent months, according to Toronto police chief Myron Demkiw. In May, Toronto police also launched an upgrade to the system in a bid to eliminate calls that were bogging down the emergency line.
Chow said while wait times have gone down in the past year, the 911 system is still "absolutely not good enough."
Melanie Jordison, Toronto Paramedic Services deputy chief, said as soon as a call is received at the 911 dispatch centre, it gets assessed.
"I can't speak to the whole process of that call specifically," she said at the same news conference where Chow spoke.
"But it's definitely something that we're reviewing."
The caller who was put on hold spoke with CBC Toronto on Monday.
He said he was inside his home Saturday night when he heard the crack of gunshots ring out nearby. He rushed outside to find two teenagers trying to carry another teen's body while yelling for help.
That's when he called 911 and wound up on hold.
He says he and a group of others eventually hailed down a car and got the boy in the back before he was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
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