ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, Md. – A Maryland 911 dispatcher has been moved out of his position after he told a distraught teenager to “stop whining.”
A teenage girl who just watched her father and his fiancé get hit by a car on 295 north called 911. She was, according to the 911 call recording, watching her dad lay dying on the side of the road.
Rick Warrick, pictured, and his fiancee were thrown to the side of the Baltimore Washington Parkway by a car. Warrick died from the collision. WJZ
Dispatcher: "Ma'am! Ma'am! Please stop yelling! Stop yelling, please!" "So two people were struck?"
Caller: "Yah, they both laying, they just laying."
Caller: "My father's laying on her... and they're just laying there. They're just laying there. There's nothing."
Dispatcher: "Ok. Let's stop whining. Ok? Let's stop whining. It's hard to understand you."
Dispatcher: "Is there someone else there I can talk to because it's so hard to -- "
Caller: "It's only my little brother! It's only my little brother and I'm talking better than him right now!"
Anne Arundel County Fire Officials are investigating.
"We think the dispatcher, in his effort to ascertain information from the caller, used a poor choice of words,” said Capt. Russ Davies, with Anne Arundel County Fire.
A poor choice, which Captain Russ Davies said got the operator -- who has been with the department for six years -- pulled off the phones.
"As a result of this, the dispatcher has been moved to a position in the department where he will not have contact with the public,’ Davies said.
First responders did eventually get to that crash on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, by tracking the teen's cell phone.
What they have yet to find? The car -- and its hit-and-run driver -- that killed the girl's father.
The caller’s father, 38-year-old Rick Warrick, was changing the tire on his Hyundai, according toCBS affiliate WJZ, when they were hit by another driver.
The dispatch center sends out more than 200 responses a day, and they said that one call on Sunday is a poor reflection of how they truly operate.
