LITTLE ROCK — Despite the efforts of an ambulance operator in a nearly 14-minute phone call Monday morning, a Little Rock woman whose vehicle crashed into a west Little Rock pond was unable to get herself or her 5-year-old son out of the sinking vehicle.
Neither Jinglei Yi nor her son Le Yang could swim, and they couldn’t get out of the sport utility vehicle and onto its roof as it sank into the freezing water.
When the vehicle hit the water, it would have started to sink from the front end, with the engine block acting as an anchor, according to fire officials.
Yi’s SUV was traveling east on Cooper Orbit Road, when it hit a patch of black ice at the intersection with Rushmore Avenue. It skidded for at least 25 yards before rolling down into the pond, police said.
Yi called 911 from the Ford Expedition at 7:57 a.m. to report that the vehicle was in the water. Moments later, she got a call from an unidentified Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services operator who told her to stay on the line until help arrived. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette obtained a recording of that call Wednesday.
Two minutes into the call, Yi said the water was up to the seat.
“OK, I want you to stay on the line with me, but you do not know how to swim?” the operator asks.
“No, I don’t know,”
“Does your child?”
“No.”
“Just try and comfort him and calm him down, OK?”
“Yeah, I’m trying,” Yi says.
In a calm voice, the operator tries to talk Yi into getting out of the vehicle, asking her if she can get to the roof or push her son on top through the open window.
“If you can, we need you to try and get on the roof of the car so that you can stand so the water doesn’t sink into the car,” the operator says.
“It’s falling,” Yi says.
“You’re falling?”
“The car is falling in the water,” Yi says.
“Ma’am, I need you to try and get out and get on the roof of the car with your child.”
“There’s no way to do that,” Yi says.
Moments later, Yi asks where the ambulance and help are.
The operator, staying calm over the screaming coming from Yi’s son in the back seat, keeps telling her help is on the way.
But the city 911 operator who received Yi’s 7:57 a.m. phone call and notified MEMS to go to the accident failed to relay the report of a “water accident with entrapment” to police or fire dispatchers, according to reports.
Police and fire crews reportedly were not sent to the scene until after MEMS officials called the city’s 911 center at 8:17 a.m. to get an estimated time of arrival for the rescue crews.
That city 911 operator, Candace Middleton, was placed on administrative leave Tuesday, and her handling of the call is under investigation by Little Rock Police Department internal affairs detectives, a police spokesman said.
Six minutes into her phone call with Yi, the MEMS operator asks Yi:
“OK, does your son know how to hold his breath?”
“Yeah,” Yi said.
“When the water gets full in your car, when it covers your head, I want y’all to take a deep breath, I need you to try and open the car door once the car is full.”
Seconds later, the operator checks to see if Yi is still there.
“Ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Can you roll your window down and get out?”
“No,” Yi says, her voice shaky. “I don’t think so.”
Le can be heard crying in the back seat as water gurgles inside the SUV.
For the next seven minutes, the operator tries repeatedly to get Yi to break a window and swim or reach the top of the car.
Twelve and a half minutes into the call, according to Fire Department call times, an ambulance siren can be heard on the tape.
“Are you there?” the operator asks.
“I heard the ambulance, yes,” Yi answers.
“Try to keep your son calm; is he OK?”
“Yes.”
“OK, keep his head above water. I want you to stay on the line with me. Do not disconnect.”
“Yes, we did.”
“Keep his head above the water. I want you to keep trying to open that door and trying to get out.”
“We cannot get out. I tried but I couldn’t,” Yi says.
“OK. Is your car electric or does it have roll windows? Are you there?”
The recording plays a series of inaudible sounds and voices, before Yi speaks seconds later.
“Sorry, I cannot see anything right now. The water is almost [inaudible] the car.”
Some time passes without a word from Yi. At 13 minutes, 38 seconds into the call or approximately 8:20 a.m., the operator asks: “Are you there? Hello?”
There is no response.
The first fire crew reached the scene at 8:28 a.m. Members of the department’s water-rescue team, after a 12-minute drive across the city for their fire station, got into the water at 8:36 a.m.
Using an inflatable raft, the three-man crew reached the vehicle, and two divers entered the water to break the windows of the SUV, which was submerged by the time they reached the pond.
Fire Capt. John Hogue broke out the driver’s-side front window, according to reports, but there was no one in the front seat.
Firefighter Jesse Clark broke out the driver’s-side rear window, where he found Yi and pulled her out. While Hogue swam her back to shore, Clark kept looking for her son.
Clark found Le in the back of the vehicle and swam with him back to shore, where paramedics took him to Arkansas Children’s Hospital. He remained in the intensive-care unit in critical condition Wednesday night.
Yi, 39, who lived at 15306 Hartford St., was taken to Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, where despite efforts to “warm her internal organs,” she was pronounced dead at 11:45 a.m.
The accident is still under investigation, as either an operator or mechanical error, according to police.
Little Rock Fire Department spokesman Capt. Randy Hickmon said that if Yi and Le could have reached the top of the SUV and been able to stay there, the first fire crew that arrived may have been able to toss them a rope and life jackets, and pull them to shore.
Other than water-rescue team members, he said, firefighters are not equipped to walk into water above their boot tops, especially when the water is freezing.
“With 30- to 35-degree water, a human won’t last after five minutes [of exposure],” Hickmon said. If two firefighters had gone in, he said, “in this water, we would have been rescuing two more people.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/17/2013