The 911 dispatcher who took the second and final call from an Ohio teen who would end up crushed to death in his minivan will return to work this week after a six-day suspension.
Operator Amber Smith was suspended on Thursday after something that has yet to be determined went wrong when a desperate call came in from 16-year-old Kyle Plush, who was being suffocated beneath a fold-down seat in his vehicle while it was parked at the Seven Hills School in Madisonville, Ohio.
Smith claimed she couldn’t hear Plush, and a document showed that her computer froze at the crucial moment of the call, just two minutes before police marked the incident complete without finding the teen.
The police dispatcher will return to work on Wednesday, Cincinnati police spokesperson Tiffaney Hardy confirmed toABC News.
DailyMail.com’s voicemail message to the Cincinnati Police Department, which runs the 911 call center where Smith works, regarding what Smith’s return to work means for the status of the investigation into her actions was not immediately returned.
The police department is still planning to execute a full investigation into the incident, Police Chief Eliot Isaac said.
Amber Smith, the 911 dispatcher who took the second and final call from Ohio teen, Kyle Plush, who would end up crushed to death in his minivan will return to work on Wednesday after a six-day suspension
Kyle Plush, 16, spoke to Smith when he called 911 a second time. He told her he was being crushed to death
Plush died of asphyxia due to chest compression after the third-row bench of his 2004 Honda Odyssey minivan flipped on top of him and pinned him beneath on Tuesday night.
Smith was placed on administrative leave Thursday, after it was revealed she is the person who failed to tell the officers the make, model and color of the minivan Kyle Plush was trapped inside of, Chief Isaac said during Thursday’s press conference.
Isaac said he does not know why Smith didn’t convey the information Plush provided her to officers on the scene.
‘Something went wrong here, and we need to find out why we weren’t able to provide help,’ he said.
He said it may have been caused by equipment issues or human error.
At one point during the second call, Plush said, ‘This is not a joke. I am trapped inside a gold Honda Odyssey van in the parking lot of Seven Hills. … Send officers immediately. I’m almost dead.’
Kyle is seen in an undated photograph with his family. Kyle told Smith to tell his mother he loves her before he died
Amber Smith was placed on administrative leave on Thursday, after it was revealed she is the person who failed to tell the officers the make, model or color of the minivan Kyle Plush was trapped inside of, Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said during Thursday’s press conference
Documents revealed that Smith claimed she could not hear Plush, but it’s not clear exactly what she said she could not make out during the call.
‘Apparently there was some trouble on the line. She did press the tone to indicate she was having trouble on the line that could possibly be a call received from a hearing impaired person but again those are things that have been conveyed preliminary,’ Isaac said.
‘This was a horrific tragedy,’ he added.
He explained that when the officers got onto the scene they ‘patrolled the area, attempted to locate the caller, [and] looked for anyone in distress.’
By the time Plush was finally discovered it was too late.
Plush was reaching for his tennis equipment for a match when he became crushed in by the third row seat in his 2004 Honda Odyssey
The coroner says the teen was crushed to death by the rear, fold-down seat in the vehicle (pictured above on Tuesday night)
Sources told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Thursday that Plush became trapped when he was leaning towards the back of the Odyssey, trying to get tennis equipment and the third row seat collapsed backward on top of him.
He was flipped into the floor of the cargo area and pinned upside down with the seat on top of his chest.
The Honda Odyssey is equipped with seats that fold down completely into the floor so that large objects like bikes can fit inside the back of the vehicle.
Last year, a recall was issued for models made from 2011 to 2017, after owners complained about second-row seats flipping forward if not properly latched.
Pictured are two police at the scene of Plush’s death on Tuesday night
Plush called 911 around 3pm, and a second time later, but he wasn’t found until 9pm. His dad found him
It wasn’t until 9pm on Tuesday evening when the boy was found by his father, trapped in the third row bench seat. Paramedics that were sent to the scene pronounced him dead.
The coroner later determined his death as accidental ‘asphyxia caused by chest compression.’
Isaac said they had gone over the timeline, and pieced together Plush’s calls to 911, and police records.
Smith said she tried to document the call when it came in but her computer screen had frozen, preventing her from entering information immediately, a preliminary review found.
It’s not clear from information provided by the police department whether information from the call was eventually entered into the system, and if so, at what time.
The circumstances surrounding the handling of that second call are now the subject of a Cincinnati Police Department investigation.
Jill Plush, with Kyle Plush, his sister and a relative in an undated photo at what appears to be a birthday celebration
Plush first called 911 using Siri on his iPhone at 3.14pm Eastern. In that call, Plush says he cannot hear the 911 call taker, but he needs help and is trapped in his van. The call lasted around three minutes before it disconnected.
At 3.23pm, two officers were dispatched to the area of Seven Hills School after using GPS technology to narrow down Plush’s location.
At 3.35pm Plush calls 911 a second time. Amber Smith at the 911 center takes the call, Plush gave her a description of the van, and his location, but a loud noise sounds during the call.
‘This is not a joke,’ the teen told Smith. ‘I’m almost dead.’ ‘I probably don’t have much time left, so tell my mom I love her if I die,’ he added during the call.
Isaac said Smith did not pass along the information about the call.
At 3:37pm, officers with the Cincinnati police officers say over radio they believe the call was a prank and they close out the call for service.
There is one final check of the area at 3:44pm, when a Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputy who was working an off-duty traffic detail, calls the communication center and asks a call taker for information about the van. He also tried to locate the van and stated he looked in one van.
Deputy Doug Allen says on the call: ‘I was in there, I just looked in a van. I didn’t see anybody in it. There was only one van by the thrift store… I’m down in the lower lot behind the thrift store.’
It was later revealed that the boy was trapped in a car in the school’s overflow parking lot, across the street from the main parking lot, which the deputies did not search.
Later, his parents received a call from a friend that Plush did not show up for his tennis match, at which point Plush’s mother, Jill, called police.
‘My son never came home from school,’ the victim’s mother said in released 911 audio. ‘And we thought he was at a tennis match. And he never came home from school.’
Plush died of asphyxia due to chest compressions after the third-row bench of his 2004 Honda Odyssey minivan flipped on top of him and pinned him beneath on Tuesday night. He was parked outside his school in Madisonville, Ohio
Above: A view inside a 2002 Honda Odyssesy, showing the third bench row. This is not the car that which Plush died
Plush’s family finally located the van using an app to locate their son’s iPhone, and at around 9 pm found the teen inside, pinned beneath the back seat, dead.
Cincinnati police detectives have retrieved surveillance video from Seven Hills School on Thursday and planned to review it to determine whether it would shed any light on the investigation.
There have been previous issues with this 911 call center, and council members are calling for a full, top down, investigation.
Meanwhile it has come to light that Smith has twice taken to Facebook to complain about working overtime – doing so most recently on Friday.
She first vented about the situation in May 2017, writing: ‘I’m always at work and working overtime… all it does (is) make us hate our job and hate the people that are off for months.’
It’s not clear if she was working overtime when Plush called in from the back of his car, slowly being crushed to death.
Smith was previously pictured in a feature by Local 12 for her handling of a young girl who was with her overdosed parents in a van.
Smith was able to keep her calm while using GPS technology to pinpoint her whereabouts. Local 12 has confirmed Smith is the same woman who handled both 911 cases.