by Ruben Castaneda, The Washington Post
A Hyattsville teenager who was suffering a severe asthma attack died early Monday evening after frantic relatives called 911 three times and got either no response or a recorded message, family members said yesterday.
When no one answered the 911 calls, the teenager’s father and a family friend desperately drove the rapidly deteriorating youth to a fire station on Riggs Road near University Boulevard for help, but no one was there, relatives said.
The father and friend then flagged down a passing police officer, who summoned paramedics on his police radio, according to relatives and Prince George’s County fire officials. Paramedics took Ainsworth Johnson, 17, to Washington Adventist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, fire officials said.
“If we had gotten assistance from 911, or even at the fire station right away, he could have been saved,” Winston Johnson, Ainsworth’s father, said yesterday.
Three or four months ago, when Ainsworth was suffering a similar severe asthma attack, a dispatcher answered a 911 call immediately and paramedics responded quickly, Johnson said. The paramedics took Ainsworth to Washington Adventist Hospital, where the teenager was stabilized.
The 911 system is part of the county’s Information Technology and Communications Department, officials said. James Rogers, a county government spokesman, was aware of the failure yesterday but declined to comment except to say that he was still looking into the matter.
Mark Brady, chief spokesman for the Prince George’s fire department, said the team of emergency workers assigned to the fire station on Riggs Road were out on a call when Johnson brought his son there. Paramedics arrived three minutes after the police officer whom Johnson flagged down called for help, Brady said.
An official at the state medical examiner’s office in Baltimore said yesterday the autopsy on Ainsworth Johnson was not complete.
The death occurred three weeks after a Prince George’s civil jury awarded more than $1.7 million to the family of a Croom man who died of a heart attack in 1999 after a county 911 dispatcher failed to recognize the gravity of his plight, despite five desperate calls from the man’s wife.
The 911 operator in that case did not ask any questions about the victim’s condition during the first call, did not recognize the classic heart attack symptoms the victim’s wife described, and dispatched emergency medical technicians instead of more highly trained medics who are certified to administer lifesaving drugs.
Johnson, who brought his family from Jamaica to Prince George’s 14 years ago, said the tragedy began unfolding about 4:30 p.m. Monday, when his son became ill at the family’s home in the 6600 block of 23rd Avenue.
Johnson said he and his brother used the two phone lines in the house to call 911, while a brother-in-law used a cell phone. He and his brother got no response, and his brother-in-law got a recorded message saying dispatchers were busy and advising callers who had an emergency to leave a message.
The brother-in-law left a message, and Ainsworth was rushed to the fire station, Johnson said.