Kelly Titchenell sits on her porch in Mather, Pa. , holding a photo of her mother Diania Kronk, and an urn containing her mother’s ashes, Thursday, July 7, 2022. AP Photo/Gene J.
Puskar A woman whose mom died a day after a 911 operator refused to send an ambulance is still grieving. Diania Kronk died in 2020 after the operator refused to send an ambulance unless she’d go to a hospital. “Every day I think about my mom,” her daughter, Kelly Titchenell, told Insider.
A Pennsylvania woman whose mom died a day after a 911 operator declined to send an ambulance to her home said she believes her mom could have been alive today if another operator picked up the phone. “She was my best friend,” Kelly Titchenell said in an interview with Insider. “She lived with me for several years.
We would cook together and do stuff with the kids. “”We were together all the time,” she continued. Titchenell made the 911 call in July 2020, according to court documents.
She described her 54-year-old mother, Diania Kronk, as “jaundiced, incoherent and bleeding from the rectum” to the 911 operator, Leon Price. But Price told her “bluntly” that no emergency services such as an ambulance would be dispatched to her mother because it would be a “waste of resources,” according to court records. Kronk died the day after the call, and two years later, Greene County, Pennsylvania, officials charged Price, 50, with involuntary manslaughter.
Today, Titchenell is still grieving. “It’s very difficult and something I’ll probably never get over,” she said. “Every day I think about my mom.
Every day I think that if they would’ve just sent an ambulance, she could be alive today. “Price, however, was only charged after Titchenell filed the lawsuit, she told Insider. Though the incident happened two years ago, the day she died continues to haunt Titchenell — especially with renewed attention today following the lawsuit.
“I feel like they would’ve never charged him if I wouldn’t have filed the federal lawsuit,” she said. The lawsuit argues that Price must have been aware of the gravity of the situation due to “Titchenell’s pleading tone and description of what was seriously wrong with her mother. “But Price “acted like it was a joke or something,” Titchenell recalled.
“I was begging him, told him that she was going to die, and it was like he didn’t take me seriously. “In the audio of the 911 call, Price can be heard instructing Titchenell to make sure that her mom would be willing to go to a hospital. He said he wanted an assurance that she’d go to the hospital before sending “resources out there.
“Greene County, which the lawsuit credits as having hired and trained Price, did not respond to a request for comment asking whether it’s standard practice for its 911 dispatchers to deny sending an ambulance to a person in need unless they can confirm the person will be transported to a hospital. If she could speak with Price today, Titchenell said she’d want to ask him how he would feel if it had been his own mother who had died because a 911 dispatcher refused to send an ambulance. “His arrest was the first thing that made me happy,” Titchenell said.
“No one should have to go through what I’m going through. . .
. I just want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. I hope everybody learns from his mistake.
“If convicted, Price faces up to five years in prison with a maximum of $10,000 in fines. Read the original article on Insider.
From: insider
URL: https://www.insider.com/daughter-woman-died-911-dispatcher-refused-ambulance-speaks-out-2022-7
