Leon Pryce: Who is He? Charges against a 911 dispatcher for REFUSING to help a woman who had bled to death
54-year-old Diania Kronk passed away a day after her daughter called 911 dispatcher Price for assistance, purportedly from internal bleeding.
Pennsylvania’s GREENE COUNTY The mother of the caller allegedly died as a result of Leon Price, a Pennsylvania 911 dispatcher, failing to send help promptly. Price is accused of refusing to send an ambulance. The occurrence happened in July 2020. Diania Kronk, Kelly Titchenell’s 54-year-old mother, was in pain from days of binge drinking when Kelly Titchenell dialed 911. She asked the Pennsylvania dispatcher for medical treatment, pleading, “She’s going to die without fast help.”
Instead of helping, the dispatcher asked Titchenell if her mother would consent to being sent to a hospital a half-hour away from her Sycamore home. We definitely need to make sure she’s willing to leave, Titchenell said. She reportedly said to Price as she was driving away from her home in Mather, “She will be, ’cause I’m on my way there, so she’s going, or she’s going to die.”
Leon Price: Who is he?
Leon “Lee” Price, 50, of Waynesburg, was charged in the first week of July with the murder of Kronk in July 2020. Along with other offenses, Price was accused of obstruction, official oppression, and reckless endangerment. Throughout the four-minute call, he repeatedly asked Titchenell if Kronk would accept to be taken for treatment while demonstrating his unwillingness to assist her. Titchenell’s response to Price’s repeated questions was, “OK, well, can we just try?” Price asked Titchenell if she would phone 911 again once she had confirmed that Kronk was willing to ride in an ambulance after she informed Price that she was roughly 10 minutes from her mother’s house. Titchenell apologized, to which Price responded, “No, don’t be sorry, ma’am. Just phone me when you arrive, please.
One day after her daughter called the 911 dispatcher for assistance, her mother reportedly passed away from internal bleeding. The 38-year-old Titchenell is confident that his mother would still be alive if he had sent an ambulance. He shouldn’t have made that choice. He ought to have dispatched an ambulance and left it up to the medical staff to assess whether or not she required hospitalization. On June 29, Price was charged and later released on bail.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Titchenell accuses Price of making a “callous refusal of public emergency medical assistance,” together with two 911 supervisors and Greene County. She stated that when she and her three children arrived at her mother’s house, she discovered her mother lying naked on the front porch and convinced her to change into a robe. At that moment, Kronk was speaking to her daughter in a garbled and incomprehensible manner. Titchenell remarked, “She simply kept saying she was OK, she’s fine. She was unable to call 911 any further due to lack of coverage and being unable to find her mother’s landline phone. She thought that making another call to 911 would be unnecessary because she had also been anticipating her uncle to check up on them. Titchenell was furious with the 911 operator and said, “To me, this is unheard of. They’ll send an ambulance for anything, after all. I’m here telling this guy that my mother is about to pass away. She should be dead, however she doesn’t receive an ambulance. The very next day, her brother was the first to discover her mother dead.
Charges against 911 operators are uncommon
John Kelly, an Illinois attorney who serves as general counsel for the National Emergency Number Association, said although such cases are uncommon, they have been known to occur. The next month of the inquiry, according to Greene County District Attorney Dave Russo, should decide whether additional charges will be brought against Price or the county. In Greene County or anywhere else, he declared, “No one should be denied emergency care.” “Everyone should have access to healthcare and equal safeguards.” According to Russo, he is also looking into if there was a policy or training that permitted the county’s 911 dispatchers to decline service to callers.
According to Marie Milie Jones, the county and 911 supervisors in the federal case intend to mount a resolute defense against the lawsuit and deny responsibility for Kronk’s passing. She declined to go into further detail, only stating that there are “personnel problems that are happening” about Price, according to Fox 10.