Carroll County is investigating a case of a man who died in June after a 911 dispatcher sent emergency responders to the wrong address, according to a report in the Times-Georgian newspaper.
A county commissioner told the newspaper that the unidentified Temple man died as a result of a 911 system error.
District 3 Commissioner Ashley Hendrix said dispatchers were supposed to send emergency responders to an address on Kathy Lane in Temple, but instead sent them to Kathy Lane in Carrollton, more than nine miles away.
"I'm sure people will say it's a human error, but I beg to differ," Hendrix told the newspaper. "We have a system that was recently updated. I voted against it, and I said at the meeting when we voted that it was going to cost someone his life."
Hendrix said she and her fellow commissioners were briefed on the 911 error by county attorney Cynthia Daley following a forum for candidates on June 28.
Daley on Tuesday declined to comment to the Times-Georgian, saying it is a civil service personnel issue, but she said the error is under internal investigation.
Hendrix told the newspaper she has a "gut feeling" that the E-911 dispatcher typed in the address, but only one address in the county came up. The new system is not "equivalent" in quality to E-911's former system, the commissioner said.
E-911's former system was bought several years ago for $400,000, the newspaper reported. It was updated in June 2010 to the current computer-assisted dispatch system, which cost nearly $150,000.
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