Woman's 911 call goes to the wrong county, she dies before EMS arrives

A Millington woman called 911 several times for help, but she died before emergency personnel could get to her Shelby County home.

Her family says her calls went to dispatch in Covington, which is in Tipton County. Instead of crews being immediately dispatched, workers had to determine where she lived – and which county’s emergency services should respond.

A family friend who called 911 from the same house had his call routed to EMS in Millington.

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The woman died before she could get help. FOX13 is working to obtain the recording from her 911 call.

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“If my mother’s call would’ve went to Millington, she would still be alive today,” the woman’s daughter told FOX13.

The woman’s call log shows three outgoing calls to 911. One call was 7 seconds. Another was 1 second. Her final call to 911 was 2 minutes and 7 seconds.

Family members say a friend of Jenkins was with her when she started having trouble breathing.

“We do know he called 911 and we do know his call was routed to the Millington Police Department,” Love said.

By the time, Shelby County emergency crews showed up to Jenkin’s home, she had passed away. Love says her mother has never had trouble getting Shelby County emergency responders to her home before for other medical calls.

“There is just too much technology that we have in the world today for something like this to happen,” Love said.

The 911 center in Tipton County also told me another one of Jenkins calls pinged off a Sprint tower here in Shelby County.

That call went to the 911 center in Covington as well.

Dispatchers in Tipton County say if they do get calls from Shelby County they transfer those to Shelby County dispatch, but they couldn’t do that in this case because they didn’t receive any information to work from.

Cox Media Group