Lawsuit Filed in VoIP 911 Incident, Woman Died

An 81 year-old Boynton Beach (Fla.) woman was alone in her home just before Thanksgiving in 2009, when she cut her foot on glassware. Sidell Reiner used a nearby telephone to dial “0” for help, but through a series of circumstances, arriving paramedics did not find and treat her, and she soon bled to death. Now Reiner’s family is now suing Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue, Boynton Beach, Comcast and the operator services company Deltacom, saying they all made mistakes that contributed to Reiner’s death. According to testimony in hundreds of pages of depositions, Comcast isn’t sure if a live Deltacom operator or a recording answered Reiner’s first call. But apparently her call was transferred to a Boynton Beach dispatcher without her ANI/ALI information being displayed. Logging tapes allegedly show Reiner gave her correct and complete address to the Boynton Beach dispatcher, and specifically explained her injury. But that information wasn’t relayed to a Fire-Rescue dispatcher when the call was transferred. Reiner became increasingly difficult to understand and hear as time went on, the logging tapes show. Paramedics testified they were told the incident was an “unknown medical” problem. They knocked on Reiner’s door, received no response, looked through the windows and then left the scene within five minutes. Reiner’s husband arrived within an hour to find her dead. Read more and listen to the logging tapes here.