covert@covert.enet.dec.com (John R. Covert) (01/03/91)
From: Dale Neiburg
Organization: National Public Radio, Washington, D.C.
Here's another story on children dialling telephones. This one
(heavily edited) is from the {Washington POST} for 17 November, 1990:
When the ringing telephone jolted Audrey Outzs out of a sound sleep
early one Sunday morning, she initially thought the crying voice on
the other end was a prankster.
Within minutes, though, she found herself reaching out to four-year-old
Marquita Davis, whose mother had just suffered a stroke, keeping the
little girl on the line while Prince George's County [MD] police
traced the call and rescued the woman.
Brendolyn Davis, 31, spent nearly two months ... recovering from her
stroke and now walks with a cane.
...
On the morning of Sept. 2, Marquita found her mother unconscious on
the bedroom floor of their...apartment with blood running from her
nose. The girl began dialing random numbers looking for help. After
the first person she reached hung up on her, she got Outzs.
Marquita "kept saying, 'My mommy won't wake up, my mommy won't wake
up,'" Outzs recalled yesterday. "I told her not to hang up the phone,
that help was on the way."
Outzs woke her son and told him to keep Marquita on the line while she
used another phone line to call police. For the next half-hour, he
tried to coax a phone number or an address while police dispatcher
[Rita] McClain-Farrow traced the call.
Leon Outzs said he kept the girl on the line by talking about cartoons
and coloring books. When he heard police knocking on the door, he
told Marquita it was all right to let them in.
...
"I just did what the county hired me to do," McClain-Farrow said. A
police dispatcher for three years, she added, "If Mrs. Outzs hadn't
believed her and had just dismissed her as another prankster, I
shudder to think what would have happened."Jim.Redelfs@iugate.unomaha.edu (Jim Redelfs) (01/12/91)
> For the next half-hour, he tried to coax a phone number...
Yet another change that has occurred since Divistiture: We ALWAYS put
the telephone number on the number-plate on all the sets.
Come to think of it, I have been in NUMEROUS homes where there wasn't
a phone number to be found!
Post your number on or near your telephones - it could help end a
crisis!
JR
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