911 Operator Fired For Sending Caller Back Who Was Then Murdered
DENVER (CBS4) - CBS4 has learned about new details in the case of a Denver 911 operator who was fired for sending an emergency caller back into the direction where he was in danger.
Last month Jimma Pal Reat was murdered after a suspected road rage incident. Pal Reat was fleeing his pursuers into Lakewood when he called 911. The dispatcher told Pal Reat he should return to Denver to file a police report. He did, but was murdered moments before police arrived.
Denver 911 records say that operator had been verbally reprimanded less than two months before the shooting.
The city fired the operator on Tuesday. On Wednesday the emergency department detailed exactly what went wrong that night.
"This event was so egregious, so serious; obviously we don't start with a verbal reprimand," Denver 911 Director Carl Simpson said.
Simpson says he had plenty of cause for firing the dispatcher that handled the call.
Denver 911 received a frantic call just after 4 a.m. on April 1. A group of Hispanic men attacked the car Pal Reat was in, throwing bottles and breaking a window. The caller also said he had been injured in the attack.
Denver 911 says under their policy that was enough to have a city officer and an ambulance respond out of city limits. Instead, the dispatcher demanded the car return to Denver. It led to the same suspects in a stolen Jeep opening fire on the group they had previously attacked.
The termination letter to the dispatcher says, "Your failure to address the medical concerns of your caller in your quest to make sure the caller was in Denver is unacceptable by any standard."
"It's a terrible call. It's the worst call that we'll have in 2012," Simpson said.
Emergency response says dispatch had enough information in the first 30 seconds of the call to respond. But the dispatcher waited more than seven minutes to do anything.
The termination letter goes on to say, "The overall failure to adhere to policy and procedure resulted in a tragic ending."
Pal Reat's family has been asking for the firing for months. They say Denver officials still have more work to do.
"We're not satisfied yet. We're not 100 percent satisfied until the killer is brought to justice," Pal Reat's brother Changkuoth Pal said.
Denver police say they have no new information on the homicide and no suspects or persons of interest.
Emergency response says the dispatcher may still appeal to get his job back, but they did not release his name because of the ongoing murder investigation.
