911 operators of Reddit were asked: “What’s the most disturbing or scary call you ever received?” These are some of the best answers.
I was a 911 Operator in Mobile, AL the day Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. We started getting lots of calls from New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast for some reason. I guess they started routing to us after all the 911 centers to the west of us started going down. Anyways, I got a call from a woman who said she was trapped in her house on Gordon Street between Florida and Law. I was confused at first because we have a Florida Street in Mobile, and after checking and double checking and not being able to find her address I asked her what city she was calling from and she said “Im in New Orleans”.
I tried to route her to New Orleans 911 and New Orleans Fire Department but could not get through. She started screaming and said the water was coming up into the attic where she was. I told her to find something heavy and break the attic vent out so she could get out on to her roof, but the vent was too small for her to crawl through. She sat down and started crying. I told her I would stay on the line with her for as long as she wanted me to. I stayed on the line and listened as she cried, prayed, cussed, and prayed some more. A little while later I could hear her struggling to keep her head and phone above water, then the phone went dead. To this day I don’t know if she lived or died. I quit 911 three months after Katrina.
[deleted]
The one that sticks with me the most was a man who was paralyzed from the waist down and had phoned up to tell us that he was mid-way through attempting to amputate his own legs at the thigh using nothing but a hack-saw and a Stanley knife.
He’d laid newspaper down on the floor and everything, in an attempt not to get blood on the carpet. Naturally not long into the call he passed out due to blood loss… Grim stuff.
Ahgwg
1979 NYC. Got a call from a crying child – a little boy – saying his mom and dad were fighting and his dad said he was going to throw the mom out of the window. I could hear a terrible fight going on in the background – woman screaming, things breaking, man yelling, etc. The poor kid didn’t know his address. We didn’t have the technology for call ID and would have to use reverse telephone books. A trace would take forever.
Anyway while I’m trying to get the address I hear a horrific scream and glass breaking. A few seconds later the other operators in the room are getting calls about a woman lying in the courtyard who came out of a window. Very sad. Worst of all is that I am sure someone else in this apartment building must have heard this fight but no one called for help until it was too late. Poor kid. Working 911 in NYC during the 70s/80s was a nightmare. The City had a very high crime rate and obsolete technology
Mizcreant908
Had a call for a brother who killed his other brother with a hammer (the pick part) while the victim’s little daughter was watching. The daughter called us from another room and told us her daddy’s eye fell out.
Perp was apprehended, daughter taken by relative. Had to smoke after that one, and I don’t even smoke.
rainbowbrite0091
Christmas Eve night I answered 911 for a hysterical lady who was crying so hard she couldn’t breathe. I asked her what was going on and she told me these exact words “my boyfriend and I, we were watching a movie. I fell asleep. I woke up and he wasn’t here.”
I thought this was a little odd so I said, “Okay ma’am, do you know where he may have went?” she wasn’t done. She said, “I found him.. in our closet, he hung himself.. with our bed sheets.” I walked her through cutting him down and starting CPR. when, in the middle of it he starts making this long raspy exhale that sounds exactly like something from a horror movie, it’s the rest of his air leaving his lungs. She starts getting hysterical again begging him, “oh my god, he’s breathing, please breathe baby, please breathe..” But I knew that’s not what he was doing.
Police/fire/ambulance got there and of course the guy was way dead. I felt so bad for that woman. That’s really the only call that has ever stuck with me.
JeCsGirl
Answered a call at 3am from a 7 year old girl who found mom unconscious on the couch and not breathing. The child knew her address and it was in the middle of nowhere. 25 minute response at best. I had to talk the kid through getting mom off the couch one arm and one leg at a time because she was too small to just pull her to the floor. Then we started cpr instructions. The kid did great. No neighbors and did not know a phone number for dad (divorced). We ended up getting mom breathing again just as the ambulance pulled up. I cried like a baby when that was over, I was so relieved for that child.
RatchetGirl1
The toughest ones for me involve kids. Any time a parent finds their child dead is especially tough. The single worst call I’ve ever taken though was a woman who was calling in that she was hearing weird noises in her house. While walking through her house she started screaming and told me there was someone in her house. There we a couple soft pops followed by a gargling sound. After the officers had cleared the house and found her, it finally came out during the investigation that her adult son had killed her while high and freaking out.
Gunshots don’t sound like you’d think on the phone, they’re rather soft. It’s an eerie sound, something so violent being so soft that if you aren’t paying attention you can miss it.
4x49ers
A daughter called on xmas day last year reporting that her father had locked himself in the back shed after an argument with the mother and was trying to hang himself. Told her to bust down the door and cut him down with whatever she could find. She was probably about 15yrs old and was yelling at her little sister to go back to the house and get some scissors or a knife to cut the noose as he was swinging from the neck.
The thing that sticks with me the most about the call was that she was not panicking and was able to convey my instructions to her (obviously freaked out) family members around her to help save her dad. By the time her father was cut down and the noose loosened from his neck, the paramedics and police arrived on scene and the call was terminated.
Shook me up a bit by the fact that a parent can attempt this in front of his family – let alone on Christmas day. I have found that children are the most calm and responsive to instructions whereas adults tend to freak out more and panic to the point of being next to useless in an emergency.
JayGeeTeeAy
I worked as a fire/ems dispatcher for a short period of time and this call (and my co-worker’s calloused reaction to it and me) is one reason I left. It was my first night on my own as a dispatcher and I had “good luck” through my training up until that point, no traumatic deaths or anything. That all ended on my first night starting with this call. It’s May 5th, right before midnight and the call comes through and all I can hear is a woman screaming and chaos in the background.
Finally I make out someone in the background saying “help get her out of the pool” and immediately send the call as a drowning. Someone takes the phone from the screaming woman and tells me they just found the baby in the pool and she’s blue. I start CPR instructions, trying desperately to be heard over the mom, still screaming in the background. Our crews arrived and I hung up.
We got the rest of the story later. There were about 20 drunk adults in the backyard, right by the pool when that 2 year old little girl wandered out from the living room, looking for her mom. No one knew how long she had been in the pool before someone finally noticed that tiny, floating body. It may not be the worst call anyone’s ever had, but I will never see a pool the same way and I’ll remember it forever.
ringrang
The call that has stuck with me the most was a call for two unconscious toddler twin girls. The mom called frantically because both weren’t breathing. I stayed on the phone until help arrived but there wasn’t much we could do.
The full story (which we rarely get by the way) is that the family went to bed early in the morning. The twins woke up and got up about two hours before mom. The 8 year old took them to her bed and covered them with a blanket, causing them to both suffocate. The real disturbing part is that by the time the officers and paramedics got there, the mom had changed their clothes and rubbed baby oil on them to give them that “life-like look”. No criminal charges filed.
Thnblu9
I had a woman call in who was hiding in her closet and told me her ex-boyfriend was breaking into her house. She told me that they had a violent history. I got her information and told her to do what she needed to do to stay safe and leave the line open no matter what. While officers were en route I heard him come in through a window and start beating her. He heard sirens coming and took off. Luckily, since she left the line open I was able to let the officers know when he took off and they caught him near the apartment.
I think the worst part was the two minutes after he left, I sat there listening to the woman weeping and not being able to comfort her because she was too far away to hear me.
[deleted]
Got a call a few years ago, lady’s house was on fire, and her daughter was stuck in a back room. The flames were too much and too high, and she couldn’t get through them to get to the girl. So I got to sit on the phone and listen. It was 5 years ago and the sounds still haunts me.
FreakInThePen
NYC – received an anonymous call that a Patrol Car (RMP) was parked in the middle of a street in Harlem with the doors open and no police officer in sight. We used to get tons of prank calls but after a while your gut tells you when they’re real. They found the officer several blocks away. He had been shot and then dragged by the perp’s car for several blocks. Terrible.
Mizcreant908
I was also working the night John Lennon was killed. Call came in as a male shot in front of his building. When we learned from dispatch that it was John Lennon the whole floor (200+ people) just went silent. The Beatles were the first album I owned. For me, it was the end of something so ethereal I can’t even name it – possibly the ideal that we might be able to change the world for the better.
Mizcreant908
For me, it was a lady calling to say she was just assaulted and beaten, someone had broken in her house. Followed by, “Oh my god! He’s back he’s back! Help!” Then the line goes dead. I send officers for an active home invasion, have ems standing by. She was lying, her boyfriend had broke up with her for cheating on him, and she threatened to call police if he left. He did, and she followed thru. She got arrested.
Justagreewithme
I once answered a call … 2 brothers were arguing over drinks and one of their girl friends or wives was over. Anyways the brothers are drinking heavily and one pulls out a gun and shoots the other one. When I received the call I can barely get the guy’s address over him screaming to send the paramedics. He keeps shouting “Where are THEY?!?” While I am trying to stay calm and give CPR instructions and tell him to tell the female there to stop the bleeding (firm pressure on the wound). Furthermore medical cannot go in on scene until police have secured the firearm. Listening to the pain in someones voice while they are screaming for help kind of haunts you. Both of them had to be around 30 years old, I couldn’t imagine killing a family member.
skidmod
A female calls me screaming. She was yelling “I’m burning!” So I told her the stop drop and roll, and once the flames were out I told her to turn on the hose and put cool water on it until the paramedic got there. Once she was a little calmer I was able to learn more about what happened. So she had been drinking with her boyfriend and he got depressed and decided tonight was the night he was going to commit suicide and kill his girlfriend.
So in his intoxicated state he found a gas can and started dumping it on himself and his girlfriend, and lit them both on fire. It also managed to catch the house/fence/yard on fire. Both of them survived, he got the worse of the burns. The house and fence had minimal damage.
skidmod
I once took a call from a kidnapping victim who jumped out of a moving car in an office park. She had no idea where she was and I couldn’t get a valid location on her cell phone (this was in 2004), only the nearest cell tower. Usually I would ask a caller in her situation to start looking in mailboxes for mail with an address on the envelope. But this was an office park with mail slots that she couldn’t access.
She was literally running for her life while I was on the phone with her, hiding behind dumpsters and bushes while the kidnappers patrolled the office park. The terror in her voice was gut wrenching. She had already been beaten, and she was afraid that if they found her they would kill her.
After about five minutes of this terrifying call, she was finally able to find a business sign on one of the windows in the complex. I frantically searched for the business address and the radio dispatcher aired the location to which at least a dozen officers responded. They found the suspect vehicle pretty quickly and a short foot chase ensued – K9 officer ended that in no time. The first officer to reach the caller ordered a victim’s advocate because of the condition she was in. I had to take a few minutes off after that call.
Crux1836
I was a 911 call-taker/dispatcher in Portland, OR and received a call from a strung out girl. Story was she said her boyfriend had been doing drugs for three days and owned a lab. She was screaming that he had wiggly, purple worms in his arms and there was blood everywhere.
Turned out that they were his veins. He was literally out of his gourd on drugs, and tearing at his flesh and ripping out his veins! I did not want to live my life on their night shift taking calls like that so it wasn’t look before I switched professions.
uzes_lightning
The one that sticks with me is an elderly lady calling saying that her grandson and husband were burning trash in the backyard and something exploded and her husband was on fire. Her grandson was 8-9 years old and couldn’t do anything about it. When the fire dept got there, they said his skin was like melted plastic and as soon as they tried to get him on the backboard, it came off exposing all his organs, etc. He died en route to the hospital. Grandson watched everything.
Squidssential
This one was probably the hardest call I’ve ever taken. The phone rings and there is a little girl 8-10 years old. She is scream/crying “Daddy is dead”. I can’t calm her down at all, she keeps crying on the line, and in the background I can also hear 2 other small girls crying. I was watching our call logs and more and more calls are coming in the same are for gunshots fired.
What had happened is 3 guys had decided to break into a house and thought it was empty, so they rang the door bell to make sure. The dad startled them and they shot him. So the mother runs out to see what happened and she got shot as well. The guys took off leaving the 3 girls aged 8-12 to call 911. We are not allowed to disconnect a phone until police or EMS are on scene. So my heart was breaking for a small family that had lost both parents in one sad accident, I listened to the girl for 6 mins and 37 seconds before police arrived on scene. The good news is that the mother lived.
skidmod
I’m a recently hired dispatcher and heard some crazy calls while going through the academy that the instructor had personally answered.
The one call I heard that bothered me the most was from a hysterical mother locked in her vehicle that was on fire. She was so hysterical she couldn’t unlock the doors. She tells the dispatcher that she has 2 kids and you can hear them crying in the back of the car. The dispatcher is trying to calm her down but its hopeless, the mother is screaming and banging on the window trying to break it. After about 2 minutes of this the mother then calls the kids up to her and you can hear them all crying and coughing. The worst part is when you can clearly hear one of the kids (sounded about aged 4-5) say “Mommy, I’m going to die!”
DMAC55
I dealt with 7 cardiac arrests on the Thanksgiving Day 2012 in a 12 hour period. I was told to go for a walk.
domeier
My first day as a dispatcher, I hadn’t even formally entered training yet. I was in the call center, signing paperwork and taking my oath. As I was being walked through the call center, shown where my locker would be, etc. a 911 call came in. It was a suicide. Caller essentially just said “Hi, this is my name, I’m going to shoot myself at this location, I just want you to know so that nobody else has to find my body.” He then turned his phone off, and shot himself. I was a little shaken, but knew that these were the types of calls I’d be dealing with, so I tried my best to shrug it off.
As I was driving home from orientation a few hours later, I noticed a group of people standing outside of a friend’s house. He was in the Greek system at the university, and it was rush week, so I figured it was some sort of recruitment event. About 15 minutes later, I got a phone call that my friend had shot himself. He was the suicidal caller from earlier in the day. I had to do a lot of soul-searching to determine if I could do the job, but I went back the next day and every day for the next 5 years.
capturedbymab
The most disturbing one was when I had a call from an elderly woman who’d had a stroke. She had attempted to call 911 before, but had dropped her phone and it had shattered. So she spent 2 hours crawling to the bedroom to reach her landline to call 911 again. I answered the phone and basically kept her calm and reassured while getting the ambulance and officers on the way. Her door was locked so I had to send an officer to her husband’s place of employment to get him started to the house to unlock it for EMS. She wasn’t hysterical and she was breathing fine and everything, but she kept thanking me for being so kind and helping her and staying on the phone with her until EMS reached her.
I was just doing my job, and I didn’t think I was doing anything special, but I cried after that phone call just cause I would want any other 911 dispatcher to do the same if it were my grandmother to call.
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