LR police operator quits; 911 caller died

Six months to the day that a Little Rock woman died when her car skidded into a freezing pond, the operator under investigation for mishandling the woman’s 911 call resigned.

Candace Middleton, who was hired in March 2012, was put on paid administrative leave Jan. 15, the day after Jinglei Yi, 39, was pronounced dead not long after water-rescue crews pulled her and her 5-year-old son from her SUV, which was submerged in a pond off of Cooper Orbit Road. Middleton submitted her resignation letter June 14, according to city officials.

Despite daily inquiries into the status of a Little Rock Police investigation into Middleton’s actions and her status with the department for several months, Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis didn’t announce the woman’s resignation until Thursday afternoon.

When asked about the delay, she said she wasn’t told by Assistant Police Chief Wayne Bewley until Thursday.

“She resigned on Friday, I don’t know what time on Friday, for some reason they didn’t tell me Monday and I was off Tuesday and Wednesday,” Davis said. “It’s unfortunate they didn’t tell me on Friday.”

Davis said the woman’s resignation effectively ended a six-month investigation into why Middleton alerted an ambulance but not police and fire crews about the crashafter Yi called 911 at 7:57 a.m.

Davis said administrative investigations are not subject to public disclosure unless they result in a termination or suspension. By resigning, Middleton’s investigation is not subject to the state Freedom of Information Act.

According to police, fire and Metropolitan Emergency Medical Service records,31 minutes elapsed from the time Yi made her first 911 call until fire crews reached the accident.

Yi, of 15306 Hartford St., was headed east on Cooper Orbit Road when she hit a patch of black ice and skidded at least 25 yards before rolling down the bank of a pond and into the water with her son Le Yang also inside, police said.

After her initial call to 911, a MEMS operator who had been alerted to the call by Middleton called Yi herself and kept the woman on the line for 13 minutes and 38 seconds, trying to calm Yi and coach her on how to get out of the SUV before it completely submerged.

The MEMS crew that reached the site of the crash called police communications at 8:17 a.m. to ask when police and fire rescue would arrive, according to reports.

According to Laura Martin, head of the Police Department’s communications unit, the call for police and fire rescue personnel was never entered.

The first rescue crews didn’t reach the pond until 8:28 a.m., approximately seven minutes after the MEMS operator lost contact with Yi. Unable to enter such deep and cold water, they had to wait another eight minutes for the department’s water-rescue team to make the 12-minute drive across the city.

Yi was pronounced dead within hours of her recovery from the pond while her son survived but was seriously injured.

At the time, Martin said that Middleton claimed that she had entered the call into the city’s Computer Aided Dispatch system after calling MEMS, but Martin said there was no record of an entry.

Martin, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, had said such an oversight had never occurred before in her 11 years with the communications division. Police said Middleton’s internal affairs investigation would determine if the delay in getting help to Yi and her child was an operator or mechanical error.

Davis said that since Yi’s death, there have been some new policies and protocols put in place in the city’s emergency communications, but she said she didn’t know what those changes were.

Davis said she didn’t know why Middleton resigned and said she was not compelled to or asked to resign by department officials.

Copies of Middleton’s resignation letter, as well as her personnel file, were not immediately available from the city’s Human Resources Department following a Freedom of Information Act request Thursday.

When asked why the investigation had not been completed in the six months since the fatal accident, Davis said it’s not unheard of for an administrative investigation to take so long.

“It’s just a process. They have to do their interviews. They have to make sure everything is covered,” Davis said. “Unfortunately, it took that long.”

The primary interviewing, fact-finding and research done by internal investigators had been done for some time and had reached the desks of both Bewley and Chief of Police Stuart Thomas several weeks before Middleton resigned.

“[The investigation] wasn’t totally complete. They had to look at it and make their comments,” Davis said. “I will say that the file was in the chief’s office. … but I can’t say the meat of it was done because there may have been some other stuff that [the chiefs] wanted[investigators] to do.”

According to city officials, Middleton was working on “probationary” status on Jan 15. Paid $13.10 an hour, Middleton continued to draw pay and benefits for six months, roughly half of her annual $27,265 salary.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/21/2013

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