The chief of the Albuquerque Fire Department said he is examining training procedures after a dispatcher hung up on a 911 caller seeking help for a 17-year-old who was dying after being shot last month. The caller was 17-year-old Esperanza Quintero, a friend of Chavez-Silver.
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In the recording, the caller snaps at Sanchez for repeatedly asking whether Chavez-Silver is breathing.
Police said he was watching the card game at a friend’s house when six shots were fired at the bay windows from outside.
On Tuesday, the Albuquerque Fire Dept. announced the dispatcher had resigned. “How many times do I have to f-king tell you?” A message left with Local 224 of the global Association of Fire Fighters, the union representing Albuquerque firefighters, was not immediately returned.
Sanchez: Ok, do you know what, ma’am? “You could deal with it yourself”, Sanchez responds. He told the station that Sanchez dispatched an ambulance 80 seconds before he hung up on the caller.
The dispatcher answered that the woman should deal with the situation herself as he will not deal with it. The woman is still negotiating, but the operator hanged up.
Sanchez asks, “Is he not breathing?”
Sanchez was removed from the Dispatch Center and placed on administrative assignment before resigning this week.
Quintero told KOAT she isn’t sure if her if her friend would have made it or not if the dispatcher had stayed on the phone. A female friend called 911 for help, but the call took a turn for the worse, when the panicked caller became irritated with the dispatcher at one point.
During the call, she says, “I am keeping him alive!”
Sanchez’s handling of the call has raised a few eyebrows and questions have arisen about whether he’s handled other calls improperly. Investigators said a bullet struck him in his upper body. The fatal incident happened on June 23 when Chavez-Silver was hit by gunfire from a drive-by shooter.
At the time of the shooting, police said they believed the teen, a wrestler and football player at his high school, was at “the wrong place at the wrong time”.
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No arrests have been made in the shooting.
