When Kyle Plush called 911, he knew his situation was dire.
The 16-year-old sophomore did not tell the authorities what had happened to him when he apparently used an automated assistant on his smartphone to make the call Tuesday outside Seven Hills School in Cincinnati. He said only that he was trapped in his minivan and could not hear them - no doubt hoping they could still hear his cries for help.
“Help, help, help, help,” he told the dispatcher, according to 911 audio obtained by The Washington Post. Then he let out a scream: “Help!”
The teen, who seemed to be laboring to breathe, repeatedly asked for the police - briefly pausing between each word to try to catch his breath.
The dispatcher repeatedly asked the teen where they could find him.
“I can’t hear you,” the teen said. Distant banging could be heard in the background. “I’m in desperate need of help. . . . I’m going to die here.”
“Help -” he said once more, and then the call abruptly ended.
Five minutes later, at 3:21 p.m., police responded and searched the area near the private school on Red Bank Road but did not see the teen, according to a statement from the Cincinnati Police Department.
In a conversation between the dispatcher and a deputy, the dispatcher said it had been difficult to hear the teen, saying he sounded “kind of far away from the phone.” The dispatcher said she could hear banging in the background and someone saying, “Help, help, I’m stuck.” The authorities then discussed whether the 911 call might have been a prank.
Nearly six hours later, Kyle’s father found him unresponsive in the vehicle, police said. First responders rushed to the scene but could not revive the teen, and he was later pronounced dead.
“Horrific, horrific situation to come across as a parent,” Cincinnati Police spokesman Lt. Steve Saunders said Thursday in a phone interview.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that a law enforcement source it did not name told the newspaper that the teen had climbed onto the rear bench seat in family’s 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan. The teen was trying to reach his tennis equipment, according to the newspaper, when the seat “flipped up and over toward the back hatch, pinning him upside down beneath the seat.”
The Hamilton County Coroner’s Office said in a statement that preliminary autopsy results showed that Kyle died of “asphyxia due to chest compression.” (Continued below.)
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“This was a horrific tragedy. What I say is that we share in their heartbreak around this,” Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac said during an afternoon news conference. “Police officers, firefighters and even our emergency dispatch personnel - you get into this because you want to help. Something went wrong here, and we need to find out why we weren’t able to provide that help that we hoped we could have.”
Following Kyle’s frantic call for help Tuesday afternoon, a dispatcher tried to call him back - but the teen, who was apparently trapped inside his vehicle, was not able to answer his phone.
As heard in the 911 audio, the teen’s phone rang and rang, then the call went to his voice mail: “Hello, this is Kyle. I’m not available right now. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Then, at some point, Kyle called the police a second time.
During that call, which lasted several minutes, he sounded weaker and something could be heard creaking in the background as the teen took breaths. The teen told the dispatcher to pass along a message for him after he died.
“I probably don’t have much time left, so tell my mom that I love her if I die,” he said. “This is not a joke. This is not a joke. I’m trapped inside my gold Honda Odyssey van in the sophomore parking lot of Seven Hills [unintelligible]. Send officers immediately. I’m almost dead.”
“Can you hear me?” the teen asked.
“Hey Siri,” he prompted his phone.
“Hey Siri.
“Hey Siri.
“Hey Siri.
“Hey Siri.”
But his pleas went unanswered.
Authorities said responding officers, who were on the scene at the time, never received the detailed information from Kyle’s second 911 call. The dispatcher who took that call, identified as Amber Smith, has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, police said.
Authorities said that a classmate called Kyle’s parents late Tuesday, saying that he did not show up for a scheduled tennis match.
The teen’s parents then used an app to track his cellphone and called the police, reporting that their son was missing, police said.
Just before 9 p.m., a passerby also called authorities from the school, saying that a man was running around the parking lot, screaming, “Call 911.” The caller said he could hear “loud bangs” and could see cars parked and people walking around, according to the police audio.
Then another caller, who identified himself as a night shift worker at the school, called police to report that the teen, who was unresponsive, was trapped in the van - “turned over in his seat and stuck.”
“He’s been there for a while,” he said.
Isaac, the police chief, told reporters that upon arrival, responding officers found Kyle in the van, “not breathing and unresponsive.” First responders were not able to revive the teen, Isaac said.
In November, second-row seats in certain Honda Odyssey minivans were recalled because they were not locking in place, though it is unclear what exactly happened regarding Kyle’s fatal injury.
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Video: Kyle Plush, 16, called 911 saying he was being crushed in his van and couldn’t breathe. He later died after police said they were unable to locate him.(Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)
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