3-month-old baby dies in hot car; 911 call center canceled EMS while en route

WASHINGTON (WJLA) — A three-month-old baby boy is dead after a D.C. rescue squad was canceled en route to the child, locked in a car – possibly for hours.

7News' I-Team has done a number of investigations on screw-ups at the city's 911 call center that have put residents in danger. Is this another dispatch mistake?

It took eight minutes for the dispatcher to see an update that the child was in cardiac arrest and failure to see updates and send crews in a timely manner has been an issue for the Office of Unified Communications.

At 6:01 p.m. Tuesday, D.C. Fire & EMS were dispatched to a child locked in a car.

At 6:02 p.m. Tuesday, the child was reported out of the car and fire rescue was canceled.

At the same time, the 911 call taker updated dispatch notes that the child was, in fact, in cardiac arrest. Yet, nobody reacted for eight minutes.

"What should have happened when the update went into the system that the baby was in cardiac arrest?" 7News' Lisa Fletcher askedDave Statter, a public safety advocate who's been tracking D.C's Office of Unified Communications (OUC) for decades.

Somebody should have seen the information that there was a child in cardiac arrest and they needed to send fire and EMS right away," Statter said. "They didn't. It was almost eight minutes before they sent the people who can handle a cardiac arrest call."

By the time help finally arrived, three-month-old Aaron Boyd, Jr. had died.

"This isn't the first time that D.C's Office of Unified Communications has missed an update in a critical situation," Fletcher said in her interview.

"I've noticed a pattern here. What we saw in this one is somebody didn't read the notes that this had been updated to a cardiac arrest call," Statter agreed. "Reading the notes is a daily problem at OUC. I've talked it with a, talked it over with them many times and they seem to think it's not a problem. In this instance, it provided information that it was a cardiac arrest and somehow they just missed it for eight minutes.

The 7News I-Team has investigated mistakes at OUC over the last few years.

Slow dispatch times, wrong addresses and unanswered calls leading to deaths are just some of what 7News uncovered.

And those mistakes, confirmed in an investigation by D.C.'s auditor, found systemic problems under then-director Karima Holmes who left but was recently brought back at the direction of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

It's a move that's mystified victims' families and officials familiar with the inner workings of the Office of Unified Communications 7News has spoken with.

There have been five deaths alone this year, where there were mistakes made involving those 911 calls," Statter said. "There have been nine in three years all, but one of them occurred under Holmes' watch."

TheMetropolitan Police Department of D.C. told 7News the department’s special victims unit is investigating. According to D.C. police, the child was in the car for at least a couple of hours – making those final 10 minutes or so even more critical.

However, 7News can't confirm if first responders arriving eight minutes sooner would have made a difference.

In previous incidents, 7News said they have found officials have not been transparent about circumstances. 7News asked to interview Holmes on-camera about this latest tragedy, but so far, no word.

In a statement, the OUC said, "The Office of Unified Communications expresses our sincere condolences to the family who lost their infant on August 9, 2022, after a call was placed for an infant locked in a car and then was updated to an infant in cardiac arrest. This tragic event is the subject of an active investigation. OUC will release the findings of our investigation when it is completed."