A Pennsylvania 911 operator faces a rare manslaughter charge for failing to send an ambulance to the rural home of a woman who died of internal bleeding a day later, despite pleas from the woman’s daughter that without medical attention “she was going to die.” “
Last week, a Greene County detective filed charges against Leon “Lee” Price, 50, of Waynesburg, in the July 2020 death of Diania Cronk, 54, based on Price’s unwillingness to send help without further assurances that Cronk will indeed go to the hospital.
“I believe she would be alive today if they had sent an ambulance,” Cronk’s daughter Kelly Titchnell, 38, said.
Price, who was also charged with reckless endangerment, official oppression and obstruction, asked Titchennell repeatedly during the four-minute conversation whether Cronk would agree to be taken away for treatment.
Price was arraigned on June 29 and released on bail. He did not respond to messages left at a home number listed in his name, and officials said a defense attorney had not contacted the district court.
“It should be very clear across the state that when you call, it’s not going to depend on someone on the other end of the phone saying that service will be provided or not,” Lawrence E. Bolind Jr. said. , who is representing Titchenell in a federal lawsuit filed last month. “What we’re trying to do here is make sure this never happens to someone else.”
In the 911 recording, a 911 operator, identified by police as Price, responded to Titchennell’s description of her mother as needing hospital treatment by asking her if she was “willing to go” to the hospital, about a half-hour away from where she lives in Sycamore.
“She will be because I’m on my way there, so she’s going or she’s going to die,” Titchennell told Price as she drove from her home in Mader.
Price said he would send an ambulance, but then added that “we really need to make sure she wants to go.”
“She’s going to go, she’s going to go,” Titchennell said. “Because if she doesn’t, she’s going to die, there’s nothing else.” She said Cronk was not thinking clearly and that he was his mother’s closest relative. When Price asked again if Cronk would really go, Titchennell replied: “Okay, okay, can we just try?”
After Titchennell told Price he was about 10 minutes away from his mother’s home, Price asked if Titchennell would call 911 back after making sure Cronk was willing to go by ambulance.
“I’m sorry,” Titchennell said, and Price replied, “No, you’re not sorry, ma’am. Just call me when you get out, okay?
When Titchnell and her three children arrived at the house, she said, Cronk was naked on the front porch and talking incoherently. She made her mother put on a dressing gown.
“She just kept saying she’s fine, she’s fine,” Titchnell said. “She’s the mother, you know—she doesn’t listen to her kids.”
Titchnell said she could not call from home because her mother’s landline could not be reached and there was no cell service. She also didn’t call on the way home, believing her uncle would check on her soon and that another 911 contact would be pointless.
“That’s unheard of for me. I mean, they’ll send an ambulance for anything,” Titchnell said. “And here I am telling this man that my mother is going to die. It’s like her death and she doesn’t get an ambulance.
Her brother found out the next day that their mother had died.
The prosecutor, Greene County District Attorney Dave Russo, said he’s also investigating whether there was any policy or training under which county 911 dispatchers were allowed to deny service to callers.
“We all deserve equal protection and we all deserve access to medical services,” Russo said in an interview. “I have great concerns about the safety of the community in regards to this.”
John Kelly, a Naperville, Ill., attorney who is general counsel for the National Association of Emergency Callers, said criminal charges against dispatchers for failing to send help are very rare, but they do happen.
In a case Kelly teaches in dispatcher training, a 911 operator in Detroit was given a year of probation in 2008 and lost her job after authorities say she did not take seriously a boy’s calls to report that his mother was collapsed. The 5-year-old boy testified that the dispatcher accused him of playing games and hung up on him, and the dispatcher stated that she could not hear the child.
Titchnell, on behalf of his mother’s estate, sued Price and Greene County in federal court in Pittsburgh last month, along with two 911 supervisors. The suit accuses Price of “callous denial of public emergency medical services.”
Marie Millie Jones, an attorney for the county and 911 supervisors in the federal case, said her clients plan to vigorously defend the case and do not believe they are responsible for Cronk’s death. She said there were “ongoing personnel issues” regarding Price, but declined to elaborate.
“It is unfortunate that this woman has passed away. Of course, from a personal perspective, it’s very difficult,” Jones said. “I will not comment on the details of her circumstances.”
Titchennell told Price that her mother had been drinking heavily in the weeks before she died and that Titchennell had noticed that she was losing weight and “turning yellow.” She said an autopsy concluded that Cronk, who worked in home health care, died of internal bleeding.
She said she thinks about her late mother every day – how the former longtime store manager loved to cook, help people and spoil her five grandchildren, how she piled a mountain of presents under the tree every Christmas.
“She had the biggest heart,” Titchnell said. “If someone had nowhere to live, she would shelter them, give them a bed. That was mom.
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