Call To 911 With Dying Teen's Location Never Got To Cops

CINCINNATI, OH — Kyle Plush, the 16-year-old boy who became trapped inside his minivan and made two frantic calls to 911 pleading for help, had pinpointed his location and provided details about his vehicle, but the information was never forwarded to police officers who may have spent only minutes searching for him before he died.

Plush became pinned when he climbed onto the rear bench seat in the third row of his Honda Odyssey to get tennis equipment in a parking lot at Seven Hills High School. The seat flipped up and over trapping Plush upside down under the seat making it a struggle to breathe.

As he was gasping for breath, he managed his first of two calls to 911. He was at Seven Hills High trapped in a van, he said in his first call. At least seven lots surround the school campus and Plush's call disconnected before he could tell the dispatcher which lot he was in or the color and make of the van.

“Help, help, help, help,” he told the dispatcher, according to 911 audio obtained by The Washington Post.

The recording indicates he was banging on the van and yelling, apparently to get attention should anybody have been walking through the lot.

Then he let out a scream: “Help!”

The dispatcher repeatedly asked the teen where they could find him.

“I can’t hear you,” Plush said, caught in the seat with his head on the floor of the van. “I’m in desperate need of help. … I’m going to die here.

"Help —” he said once more before the line went dead.

Officers, Edsel Osborn and Brian Brazile were sent to the school. Not knowing the lot or even what vehicle they were looking for, they speculated about the possibility the call was a prank.

The officers searched an unknown number of parking lots at the school on Red Bank Road but found nothing, according to a statement from the Cincinnati Police Department.

Unclear is how extensively the officers searched. Police policy requires officers to begin recording with their body cameras when they arrive at the scene of a call and turn the cameras off when they leave. If the officers followed that policy, they searched for just more than 3 minutes, based on video from the cameras.

The video also shows them driving through only one of the school's parking lots, and they apparently never got out of their car to listen for Plush's screams for help.

"I don't see nobody," one of the officers can be heard saying on the video as they wrapped up the search. "Which I don't imagine I would."

When the officers were still at the school, Plush managed to make a second call to 911 that potentially could have saved his life. He told the dispatcher the make and color of the van and where he was, that officers should go to the sophomore parking lot and look for the gold Honda Odyssey.

Somehow, though, the officers never got that information. They left the school grounds unaware that the teen was dying only a short distance from them.

About six hours after the first 911 call, Plush's father found the van. Inside, he found his son, dead. The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office said in a statement that preliminary autopsy results showed Plush died of “asphyxia due to chest compression.”

Authorities said the dispatcher has been suspended pending an internal police investigation to determine whether the officers never got the information that could have saved Plush because of human failure or an equipment malfunction.

Even as Plush had to believe that he provided more than enough information for police to find him, he seemed to sense in that same call that his chances of living through the ordeal were slim.

“I probably don’t have much time left, so tell my mom that I love her if I die,” he said. “This is not a joke. This is not a joke. I’m trapped inside my gold Honda Odyssey van in the sophomore parking lot of Seven Hills [unintelligible]. Send officers immediately. I’m almost dead.”

“Can you hear me?” the teen asked.

“Hey Siri,” he prompted his phone.

“Hey Siri.

“Hey Siri.

“Hey Siri.

“Hey Siri.”

The city's acting manager, Patrick Duhaney, has promised a plan to fix Cincinnati's 911 center by the end of the month, according to WCPO. The news channel has previously reported on problems at the 911 center, going back as early as 2013.

In a statement following Plush's death, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley acknowledged that problems with management, supervision and technology have been reported at the 911 center for years.

You can see the second video released by police below:

Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Image via YouTube screenshot