Dispatch errors in Provo rile man's kin

PROVO — Scott Aston's family members believe he would still be alive, or at least they would know what killed him, if a Provo police dispatcher had properly handled the 911 call Aston made from his cell phone last fall.

Aston died Oct. 1 in his apartment at 915 N. 500 West after he dialed 911 and spoke for more than three minutes with a dispatcher who misheard his address. A rescue team was sent to 950 N. 500 West, according to a copy of the 911 tape obtained by the family through a government records request.

The 30-year-old man's body was found four days later when his sister-in-law called police to open his locked apartment door.

Aston's sister is upset that after Provo officials assembled a press conference last week to disclose the fatal gaffe, media reports focused not on a series of dispatcher mistakes but on the need for improved 911 equipment that would trace cell phone calls.

"I want the public to know the truth and the family's side of the story," Kearns resident Carol Davis said. "They keep saying it was about the cell phone, that they couldn't trace it. But my brother gave them his address twice, his phone number twice and told them the name of the complex he was in, all within the first minute of the call. The call lasted more than two minutes beyond that.

"There's no reason they couldn't have gotten the information they needed."

Provo spokeswoman Raylene Ireland said the city did not intend for the cell phone angle to draw attention away from the errors.

"We didn't try to upstage the one with the other," Ireland said. "Certainly it's clear to us that starting with the mishearing of the address that a series of events developed that brought anguish to his family and were devastating to us as well."

In his 911 call, Aston wasted no time conveying how dire he believed his situation was.

"Send an ambulance, I'm dying," were his first words to the dispatcher who took the call.

He apparently didn't notice when the dispatcher repeated Aston's address back to him incorrectly. The dispatcher said "nine-fifty" instead of stating each digit individually — "nine-five-zero" — as required by the Provo City Communications Center Operations Policy.

In fact, the very numbers that contributed to Aston's death — 15 and 50 — are used in the policy's example of why dispatchers must repeat addresses back to callers one digit at a time.