Body camera footage from two Cincinnati officers showed they never left their patrol car to investigate the 911 calls about a teen being stuck in a minivan last week.
Kyle Plush, 16, called 911 twice on April 10, 2018, from inside a minivan begging for help and providing a dispatcher with a description and location of the vehicle in a school parking lot. Plush suffocated after he became trapped under the third-row seat that flipped and pinned him while he was trying to reach his tennis equipment. Police said Amber Smith, the 911 operator who answered Plush’s second call, failed to relay information to the additional officers who were at the scene.
Kyle Plush died on April 10, 2018, after being crushed to death by a minivan seat. (FOX19/Cincinnati Police)
During the call, Plush explained to Smith the call was not a joke.
"I am trapped inside my gold Honda Odyssey van in the parking lot of the Seven Hills...Send officers immediately," Plush pleaded. "I’m almost dead.”
Smith, who has been a 911 operator for four years, returned to work this week after being put on administrative leave. She told supervisors her computer froze and she was unable to put information into the system. She also told her supervisors she didn't hear the teenager, according to a police quality review report obtained by FOX19.
The footage showed Officers Edsel Osborne and Brian Brazile driving their cruiser around the parking lot but not leaving the vehicle, WCPO reported. Music appeared to be playing in the background.
"I don't see nobody, which I didn't imagine I would,” one of the officers was heard saying.
“I’m going to shut this off,” one of the officers was heard saying.
Records showed officers were at the school for about 11 minutes.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reports the footage also shows the officers did not check all the school's parking lots.
Osborne and Brazile were not placed on administrative leave, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Tiffany Hardy, a spokesperson for the Cincinnati Police Department, said the footage was “the entirety of what was recorded.”
A Hamilton County deputy who was directing traffic also looked for the teen but did not find anything.
Another officer was told to respond to the scene later in the day but thought the call was a joke.
"I think somebody's playing pranks. It was something about they were locked in a vehicle across from the school, we never found anything. But we'll respond and see what else we can find," an officer was heard saying in the radio transmission.
Plush was found dead hours later by his father.
Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac has called for an internal investigation into the teen’s death and why first responders failed to help him.
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