A 911 operator has been charged with involuntary manslaughter after he declined to send an ambulance to a bleeding woman in Pennsylvania, the Associated Press reported.
A criminal complaint filed within the Western District of Pennsylvania last month says Leon Price, 50, on a 911 call between him and Kelly Titchenell refused to send an ambulance to her mother unless she indicated that she’d go to the hospital.
Titchenell made the 911 call in July 2020, according to court documents. In the complaint, Titchenell’s attorneys said she described her 56-year-old mother, Diania Kronk, as “jaundiced, incoherent and bleeding from the rectum” to Price.
But Price told her “bluntly” that no emergency services such as an ambulance would be dispatched to her mother because it would be a “waste of resources,” the complaint says.
“No requested emergency services came that day as a result of Defendant Price’s actions, and as a proximate and/or direct result of the lack of emergency medical care, Diania Kronk died,” according to the complaint.
If Price had sent over an ambulance or some kind of emergency relief, the complaint says, Kronk would have at least suffered less and might have had a “more dignified” death.
The lawsuit also says Price must have been aware of the gravity of the situation due to “Titchenell’s pleading tone and description of what was seriously wrong with her mother.”
“Price had no authority, by statute or otherwise, to superciliously deny services” to Kronk or Titchenell, the lawsuit argues.
Kronk died the day after.
“I believe in my heart that my mother would still be alive if he would have sent an ambulance,” Titchenell said, according to the Washington Post. “It shouldn’t have been his decision. He should have sent an ambulance and let the professionals decide if she should go to the hospital or not.”
Two years later, Greene County, Pennsylvania, officials have charged Price with involuntary manslaughter, the Post reported, for which the maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine along with five years in prison.
