By Cody Francis, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Original publication date: Aug. 3, 2011

INDIANA COUNTY, Pa. — A prank 911 phone call sent emergency officials on an hourlong search for a woman who claimed she was giving birth in the parking lot of an Indiana County mall.

Gary Ryan, Indiana County’s 911 coordinator, said a dispatcher received a call on Tuesday night from a frantic woman asking for assistance after she began giving birth in a Chevrolet Tahoe in the parking lot of the Indiana Mall, near a theater.

Dispatchers then tried to trace the call but found it was made from an “administrative line,” which is “difficult and extremely time-consuming” to trace, Ryan said, so units were dispatched in an effort to find the vehicle.

“Based on the information that the caller gave us, we felt it was sufficient enough to locate (the caller),” Ryan said. “Some units were dispatched to locate and the caller remained on the line. It prompted a widespread response.”

Ryan said police and fire trucks in the area as well as community volunteers — including emergency room nurses — took to the streets for more than an hour to try to locate the caller, but had no luck.

He said the caller stayed on the line but was not responding to the dispatcher, which created an even greater sense of urgency.

“Initially, the caller was very dramatic, but eventually we just heard breathing on the phone,” Ryan said. “Now, we’re thinking we have an individual who just gave birth who is hemorrhaging and in shock, and there is a chance of imminent death, so we are very eager to find and help that individual.”

While units were still out searching for the caller, a dispatcher heard the sound of a train in the background during the phone call, which led officials to believe the call was from a different area.

After calling train dispatchers, Ryan said they were told the nearest train running at the time was in Punxsutawney — almost 30 miles away.

“At that point, we were running out of resources and were trying to be as innovative as we could,” Ryan said, adding that crews then broadcasted a message over the criminal information system.

The message was returned by 911 officials from Butler County who said they had run into a similar incident earlier in the day and had no luck finding the caller.

Ryan said the search was then called off and the phone call was deemed a prank. He added that the search not only hurt emergency responders financially — ambulance services require paid personnel and fire trucks and other vehicles have to pay for fuel — but it also affected the safety of the community.

“Naturally, a large response would be expected because you want to find the individual,” he said. “Because this is a prank, it takes away those resources from someone who might need them and it puts the community in a vulnerable position.

“You want to provide for individuals in need and to see that someone would be so inconsiderate to the community to do something like that, naturally it causes frustration,” Ryan added. 

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