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DETROIT-- A 5-year-old boy called 911 to report that his mother had collapsed in their apartment, but an operator told him he shouldn't be playing on the phone, and she died before help arrived.
The family of Sherrill Turner, 46, of Detroit, doesn't know whether a swifter response could have saved her life, but they want to know why the operator apparently treated the call as if it was a prank.
"Clearly there is nothing in that that sounded like a prank," Delaina Patterson, the eldest of Turner's 10 children, said Friday.
Detroit police said the 911 response was under investigation.
After Turner collapsed Feb. 20 on the kitchen floor, her son, Robert, placed two calls to 911, Patterson said. In the first call, Patterson said Robert told an operator that his mother had passed out, but the operator asked to speak with an adult.
When he called back later, Patterson said, an operator said: "You shouldn't be playing on the phone."
In a tape of the call, parts of which were broadcast by Detroit-area television stations WJBK and WDIV, the operator said: "Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble."
In an audio of the tape played on TV, some of what the boy says is unintelligible.
Patterson, who lives in suburban Detroit, said her brother placed the first call about 6 p.m., and police didn't arrive until about three hours later. She said only Robert and his mother were home at the time.
Detroit police spokesman James Tate said it was at least an hour before authorities arrived, but he said he didn't have details. By that time, the boy's mother had died, he said.
"The operator may have believed he was playing on the phone," Tate said.
The 911 operator remains on the job amid the investigation, Tate said.
Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings said it is important not to rush to judgment.
"The citizens of Detroit can be assured that our department is meticulously examining every aspect of what occurred," Bully-Cummings said Friday in a news release, "and if disciplinary action is recommended following the completion of the investigation, then that is the course that will be taken."
She declined further comment "due to imminent or pending litigation."
Kimberly Harris, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1023, said the 911 operator deserves the benefit of the doubt as the response is investigated.
"Part of the tapes and the boy's responses were inaudible," said Harris, whose union represents 911 operators.
Robert, who turned 6 last month, is living with relatives in the Detroit area, Patterson said. She said he wasn't available for an interview Friday, but he had recounted the call to local broadcasters.
"I tried to tell them she wouldn't talk," Robert told WDIV.
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