The Associated Press via The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
A woman’s suicide attempt was thwarted when a dispatcher was able to direct rescue personnel to her home based on the sound of sirens he heard over the woman’s phone, authorities say.
The Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Department said the incident late Wednesday morning began when the woman dialed 911 on her home phone and somehow reached a Washington County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher in West Bend.
“She told someone there that she needed an ambulance and that she was going unconscious,” Ozaukee County sheriff’s Sgt. Brian Glocke said.
The call was transferred to Ozaukee County sheriff’s dispatcher Christian Hill, to whom the woman gave an address in Belgium and then apparently passed out, leaving the phone line open.
Glocke said emergency medical personnel discovered that the woman had given them the wrong address when they arrived there.
But Hill radioed to rescue personnel and sheriff’s deputies’ that he had heard their vehicles’ sirens over the phone line as they passed near the woman’s home.
They then retraced their routes with their sirens on until Hill could clearly hear them again about a mile away from the address the woman had given authorities.
Glocke changed the tone of his patrol car’s siren, giving Hill two different sounds to use as he helped direct rescuers.
A sheriff’s deputy eventually knocked on the door of a duplex that had a similar address as the one that had been given, but no one answered. But, when a Belgium firefighter yelled through an open window, Hill could hear the voice, so deputies and firefighters entered the residence and found the woman “in the process of a suicide attempt,” Glocke said.
“She obviously wanted our help,” the sergeant said.