Officials have confirmed that human error was to blame for a mis-dispatched ambulance whose would-be passenger died while waiting for its arrival Thursday. At 9:04 a.m. Mariela Lazaro called 911 and said her son’s nose was bleeding, but she was too upset to give her exact cross streets. While searching for the address in the database a 911 worker hit the wrong key and located Avenue C in Brooklyn, though Lazaro was actually calling from Avenue C in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town. An emergency crew rushed to the outer boroughs address, but quickly realized something was wrong. Less than twenty minutes after the original call another crew found its way to the correct home, but by then it was too late, the boy was dead.
According to the Daily News it's unclear if Ian Uro could have been saved. He had been sick with a cold relatives told the Post; the day before he’d been hospitalized for a fever and other symptoms of the flu. "It's so sad," said the little boy’s grandmother, who arrived from Argentina Friday. Autopsy results will reveal more.
As for the call system, it was installed last May, and has been blamed for several fatal mis-dispatches. However, in this case officials agree the operator was at fault, not the technology.
