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December 09, 2014

911 Operators Discuss The Most Insane Call They've Ever Gotten

Emergency workers must see some crazy stuff on a daily basis. Most of us probably can't even imagine the sort of calls and they have to respond to almost constantly. A Reddit thread recently asked current and former 911 operators to discuss the most insane call they've ever gotten. Here are some of the craziest ones from the discussion.


I was an operator in the late 90s. An old man calls saying his wife is dead. Presumed to be natural, I asked how he knows she’s dead.

“Cause I stabbed her.”

“Why did you stab her?”

“I couldn’t take it anymore.”

First ever 911 I answered was about a naked man sitting in a bathtub on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. He was drunk and we still don’t know where he got the tub.

This lady calls and says, “My husband has a gun to my head and won’t leave me alone you gotta come quick.” She’s screaming into the phone then she puts it down. All I can hear at this point is her yelling at her husband, “But I LOVE YOU BABY!” Then BOOM! Gunshot. “BUT I LOVE YOU!” BOOM! Gunshot. Something garbled.. “BUT I LOVE YOU!” BOOM! Gunshot.

So at this point I’m standing up yelling into my little microphone, “Stop saying I love you!” And everyone in the room with me now turns and looks at me but I was caught up in the call.

Turns out the man walked in on the woman and found another guy in the closet. Said guy ran out of the house, but the woman didn’t make it out alive.

I gave childbirth instructions to a deaf father via relay for his deaf wife. They were the victims of a home invasion and were tied to chairs. Burglars saw her in labor, panicked, then left. It took dad hours to free himself and call.

While giving the instructions I obtained a suspect description to put out to surrounding agencies. They were caught in the city to our north during the call.

Baby boy was born perfectly healthy.

I had an 8-year-old call about his mom not waking up and he didn’t know if she was breathing so I had to walk him through how to figure out if she was breathing or not.

I still remember him sobbing on the phone just saying, “Mommy” over and over cause he was in shock and me having to be a prick and keep him in the room trying to figure it out instead of getting him outta there. He didn’t have to see that.

I actually took a call last night where a macaw had got into a tree. The owner went up after it and got stuck. Her husband calls and we send the fire department. The fire truck got on scene and noticed that while the husband was waiting for the firefighters, he too got stuck in the tree. The best radio traffic I have ever heard. “Umm, one male, one female, and one bird stuck in a tree. We’ll be out investigating.”

I took a call once of a house being on fire. So of course we send fire department out. Soon as they arrive on scene they ask for the police to respond (police don’t typically respond to this area with FD).

Turns out the story was that a girl’s fiancĂ© arrives home and dumps gas on her and lights her in fire. She then runs to the shower to try to put herself out. He follows her, turns the shower off, dumps more gas on her and lights her back on fire. She then runs thru the house thereby lighting the house on fire. She then runs out of the house as FD arrives on scene. So when FD pulled up they had arrived to a body collapsed in the yard on fire. When PD arrives, the male fiancĂ© walks out of the burning house, let’s himself into the back of a police car and says, “take me to jail.”

My dad was a phone operator for the Samaritans. I remember him coming home one morning visibly shaken up. I found him later in the day crying (the only time I have ever seen him cry). He never returned to the Samaritans. He has only ever told me some of the details of the phone call but never the full story.

He had spent five or six hours on the phone to a young woman as she drank and took sleeping pills and cut herself. She’d had a terrible life (I don’t now any of the details). But she passed away while on the phone to my dad. He said that he felt so powerless, so unable to do anything for this young woman as she died in front of him.

My mom has been a 911 operator over 30 years. I won’t ask her this question, but I will tell you what I know was her hardest call.

The pastor at our church helped my mom through so much. When she married, had my sister, then step dad cheated on her, mentally abused her, then divorced her, and she struggled. But he was so kind. Providing when they could around holidays and Christmas so we could have gifts. This was a span of 18 years. He retired, still lived in our community.

She got a call from a member of the church who she knew. He and the pastor’s wife had been out, they came home and the retired pastor was on the floor. Wife was screaming, my mom giving CPR instructions while dispatching the fire and medics. He didn’t make it. Cardiac arrest.

The friend knew my mom answered, but never told anyone.

The one call I will always remember was a call from a man in North Carolina. He was harvesting his crops and some guy walked into his farm and laid down in front of his tractor.

You could hear the guy's wife in the background going hysterical.

The guy got decapitated and everything. It was horrible

My wife wakes up crying once and a while after dreaming about certain of her calls. It’s always either “mommy won’t wake up” or “I backed over my boy”. She has not been on the job for 15 years, some things just leave marks.

My favorite call I have personally taken that I won’t forget is about a couple at McDonald’s.

They had just purchased a new vehicle and went out to celebrate the purchase at a local McD. The wife for some reason decided she had better check the spare tire and make sure they had one before they left town and found a gun instead. I received a call from the wife stating she just accidentally shot her husband. When I was asking about exit wounds she said it did not penetrate but burned him real badly. Turns out wife shot the husband with a flare gun when she went to show it to him. They did not finish their big macs and I’m not sure how that marriage ended up. He wasn’t a happy man on the way to the emergency room to get burn treatment!

Harley motorcycle tipped over and the clutch lever went into a 4 year old’s eye. Parent was on the line asking what to do. Suddenly, she said, “They’re going lift the motorcycle.” I emphatically told her to tell them to stop and wait for rescue and EMS.

Rescue ended up cutting off the clutch lever and transporting the kid to hospital. She underwent surgery. That was 1982. Just last year, I met the lead rescue officer and the girl herself, now fully grown. They wanted to meet the 911 operator that saved her vision.

My first call I ever had to dispatch on the radio.

Two homeless dudes blowing each other on the bus.

I’m sorry it’s not serious, our traumatic but it will always stay with me.


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