Bob CollinsRaymond Callihan, 72, will be taken off life support in the next few days; he suffered an apparent heart attack while eating breakfast last week, according to WCCO.
Would it have made a difference if Minneapolis’ 911 operators had answered Arcola Tullis’ call for help?
They didn’t, WCCO reports.
“I just have nightmares about what else could I have done myself because it took 911 so long to answer,” Tullis tells the station.
The city says operators tried to call her back; she says that’s not true.
Beyond that, WCCO says the city’s officials and politicians have gone silent:
So why did it take nearly five minutes and two tries for Tullis to reach 911? We’ve been asking since the day it happened. The city said it can’t answer due to a personnel issue, only saying that it was a typical Thursday morning with a normal number of calls.
But a spokesman acknowledged Arcola’s calls didn’t meet the city’s answer-time standards.
When our first story aired, Mayor Betsy Hodges called it “sensational” and said “facts were manipulated to scare people.”
The mayor then told us, moving forward, she would not answer questions about WCCO’s investigation, even after we told her administration what happened to Callihan.
While his family waits for answers about the delays, they’ll never know the difference those five minutes might have made.
“They’re supposed to help, not tell somebody to hold on,” Reed said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right.”
