GILROY
– A veteran city emergency dispatcher got distracted by another
call and forgot to pass on a runaway truck report to the California
Highway Patrol and paramedics on Aug. 26, city police announced
Monday after a month-long internal investigation.
GILROY – A veteran city emergency dispatcher got distracted by another call and forgot to pass on a runaway truck report to the California Highway Patrol and paramedics on Aug. 26, city police announced Monday after a month-long internal investigation.
When CHP and rescue personnel finally responded more than an hour later, they found William Iwanaga, 75, of Gilroy, dead in the pick-up truck. It’s unknown whether an earlier response could have saved him; signs indicate he suffered some sort of debilitating attack while driving, although the county coroner’s office is waiting on test results before determining a cause of death.
After considering and ruling out the possibility of mechanical error in the dispatch equipment, city police settled on human error. The dispatcher took notes on paper as the female caller told him of a runaway pick-up that had nearly hit her, according to Gilroy Assistant Police Chief Lanny Brown, who headed the internal investigation.
One second before the call suddenly disconnected, a fellow dispatcher received a call about a 1-year-old boy who had fallen and was not breathing. The first dispatcher got involved in helping rally various emergency crews to the boy’s aid – he was revived – and then forgot about the former call during almost an hour of “steady, moderately busy activity,” Brown said. An hour later, the woman’s husband called 911 and alerted CHP to the incident.
Despite the distraction of the 1-year-old’s coinciding emergency, Brown insisted that “We are not trying to make excuses for ourselves. … The dispatcher has owned (the error), and by virtue of that, the police department has owned it. … CHP should have been called, and they weren’t.”
The Gilroy Police Department has since begun training dispatchers to type incidents into their computers instead of writing them on paper. If the dispatcher in question had done this, Brown said, the Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system would have reminded him that the incident with the runaway truck was unresolved. The dispatcher would presumably have seen this CAD entry and acted on it immediately after helping with the 1-year-old’s crisis – a higher priority at the time, since no life-or-death matter had been indicated in the runaway truck call.
Police are now assessing possible disciplinary action for the dispatcher. Police would keep such action confidential, along with the dispatcher’s name – a requirement under labor laws, Brown said. The dispatcher has been represented through the investigation by a union official of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The dispatcher was a 16-year veteran – “one of our most trusted (and) competent, who has never done anything like this before in his whole career,” Brown said. “He’s one that I would personally want to have involved if my family was in a bad situation. … (The mistake) is not characteristic of his performance. … This has hit him very hard personally.”
This “exemplary” record is partly why Brown – substituting at the time for vacationing Police Chief Gregg Giusiana – decided not to place the dispatcher on administrative leave after the incident.
Iwanaga’s daughter, Lisa Sheedy, said on Monday she was saddened to hear of the dispatcher’s remorse over the incident.
“We’re not putting blame on anybody,” Sheedy said. “As far as we’re concerned, when my dad lost consciousness, that’s when we lost my father. … I don’t blame the dispatcher at all.”
Iwanaga’s truck was found northeast of Gilroy at the intersection of Buena Vista and No Name Uno avenues. Iwanaga was on his way to have a kidney-related ultrasound done at Saint Louise Regional Hospital, just blocks away. He was also close to where he had farmed strawberries for 40 years before retiring.
The woman who reported the incident called a non-emergency police line instead of 911, which led her to the Gilroy dispatcher. Being outside the city limits, the incident was in the CHP’s or Sheriff’s jurisdictions. Calling 911, as her husband did later, would have put her directly in touch with CHP.
The truck reportedly stopped after crossing a drainage ditch and running over a chain-link fence. When emergency personnel finally arrived, they found Iwanaga hunched in the pick-up’s cab. Iwanaga did not show typical car-wreck trauma leading CHP and rescue officials to suspect he did not die as a result of the collision.
It’s difficult to determine whether an earlier response would have saved Iwanaga. Since the caller did not see Iwanaga driving the vehicle and reported no medical situation, nonparamedic units would likely have been the first to respond. The CHP units would then have called for paramedics once they discovered Iwanaga. CHP officers are trained emergency medical technicians and could have delivered CPR to Iwanaga even before paramedics arrived on scene.
