BUDA, Texas (STPNS) -- When Daniel Galicia?s family realized their 7-year-old child had been injured while playing on a trampoline in the backyard, they dialed 911.

For the next agonizing 16 minutes, the family attempted to perform CPR on Daniel and waited for help to arrive. By the time EMS workers arrived on the scene, Daniel had already died, a victim of a stray bullet from a neighbor?s target-shooting that struck his back.

The 911 system appeared to break down in multiple places after the Galicia family called for help last Tuesday at 7:21 p.m. The call was routed to the wrong county, and the wrong emergency department was dispatched to the wrong location. More than three times the average response time elapsed between the family placing the emergency call and first responders arriving on the scene.



?We can?t afford for that to happen again,? said Lieutenant Dennis Gutierrez, 911 Communications Supervisor for the Hays County Sheriff?s Office. ?We need to be able to respond and get to the location with extreme speed.?

In this case, first responders said the gunshot wound injured Daniel?s small body so severely that even immediate medical attention probably would not have saved the child.

But in the case of a heart attack or a similar emergency, 16 minutes could mean the difference between life and death, noted Buda Fire Chief Clay Huckaby.

Daniel?s family placed the 911 call from a cell phone. The call bounced off the closest cellular tower?in this case, in Caldwell County, rather than Hays County. The Caldwell County Sheriff?s Office answered the call at 7:21 p.m.

According to Caldwell County policy, any call requiring EMS services is transferred to the Lockhart Police Department, Gutierrez said. When Lockhart received the call, dispatchers realized it originated in Hays County.

The Lockhart dispatcher was telling the family how to give Daniel CPR, so instead of transferring the call directly to Hays County, the dispatcher stayed on the phone and contacted the Hays County Sheriff?s Office Dispatcher.

?In the case of the young boy, if Caldwell County had transferred that call directly to us we would have had firsthand information from the caller,? Gutierrez said. 

Like the children?s game of ?telephone,? information was relayed from Daniel?s family to Lockhart to Hays County. And like the children?s game, the message became garbled.

At 7:26 p.m., the Buda Fire Department and the San Marcos Hays County EMS Medic 4, the ambulance that serves the Buda area, were paged to 1939 High Road.

There is no High Road in Buda, but there is a Hy road, pronounced the same way, and the Buda Fire Department was there within a minute.

Huckaby, the Buda Fire Chief, told the dispatcher that the addresses on High Road only went up to the 300 block and asked her to spell out the name. He quickly realized the call had gone to the wrong department.

Four minutes after the first page, the Kyle Fire Department was dispatched to the correct High Road, and arrived at 7:37, 16 minutes after the call was made.

Kyle FD Assistant Chief Rick Beaman, a first responder on the scene, described Daniel?s wound as ?catastrophic.? Though the child had no pulse, they continued CPR until the ambulance, which had been en route to the Buda Hy Road, arrived a few minutes later.

Instead of the efficient machinery that is supposed to dispatch officials to an emergency, EMS personnel describe a scene of confusion and miscommunication on the night that Daniel died.

Part of that confusion, said Hays County 911 Addressing Director Steve Floyd, is due to the number of roads in Hays County that share names, or similar-sounding names. New roads are not allowed to duplicate names, but a number already exist.

?We?ve got issues with a lot of names,? Floyd said. ?We have a legacy here that we all inherited that we really can?t do a lot about without changing many, many people?s addresses.?

Nationwide, Floyd said, the technology for directing and locating 911 calls made via cell phones is still spotty.  

Gutierrez noted that the department is considering updating its computer aided dispatch to a system that would display the call location on a screen in emergency trucks.

?In this case when we dispatch High Road over the radio, they could see on the screen the proper spelling, and they would have been able to catch the mistake immediately,? Gutierrez said.

 

Officials are also considering consolidating the Dispatch system. The Sheriff?s Department, Texas State University, and San Marcos Police Department all maintain separate systems.

The emergency workers on the ground hope the improvements come quickly.

?This doesn?t happen just every now and then, this happens all the time,? Huckaby said.

Last month, Huckaby said, Buda first responders were paged to Live Oak Lane in Mountain City, and they advised the dispatcher that the Kyle Fire Department covers Mountain City. The call, it turned out, originated at Live Oak Lane in the City of Hays.

?I?m not trying to run the dispatchers down, and I think they?re doing a great job,? Huckaby said. ?But the 911 dispatch in Hays County is so far behind on the technology curve that it?s hard for them to dispatch the right people to the right location.?