New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Glitches and repeated crashes in the city’s new 911 computer dispatch system appear to have delayed emergency responders during several life-and-death situations this week — possibly even in the crash that killed 4-year-old Ariel Russo.
Ariel died Tuesday when a 17-year-old unlicensed driver who was fleeing police rammed his parents’ SUV into the girl and her grandmother on an upper West Side street corner at about 8:15 a.m.
Logs of 911 calls obtained by the Daily News, as well as interviews with emergency responders, show that it took an unusually long 4 minutes and 18 seconds from the time of the first request for an ambulance from police at the scene to a 911 operator, until the time an ambulance was finally dispatched. Once FDNY and EMS dispatchers received and acknowledged the transmission, it took 3 minutes and 52 seconds to dispatch an ambulance and for it to arrive at the scene.
Full story: Gonzalez: Mistake delayed ambulance to girl, 4, struck by SUV on Upper West Side