911 Dispatcher Who Told Girl 'Stop Whining' No Longer with Fire Department

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The 911 dispatcher who told a teenage girl to “stop whining” when she called for help after her father was hit by a car no longer works for the Anne Arundel County Fire Department.

Capt. Russ Davies, a fire department spokesman, told the Capital-Gazette the dispatcher in question no longer is employed by the department. Davies said he could not share the employee’s name or details about his departure from the job.

Rick Warrick, 38, and his fiancée were changing a flat tire on the BW Parkway earlier this month when they were hit by a vehicle that didn’t stop. Warrick died from his injuries.

The audio recording of the conversation between Warrick’s daughter and the Anne Arundel County emergency dispatcher shows the girl and her younger brother didn’t know where they were when their father pulled over to switch tires. No other car stopped to help as they waited for police to arrive.

The fatal accident happened after a trip to Arundel Mills mall Feb. 1. Warrick, a car salesman from Washington, D.C., and his fiancée had just put the last lug nut on the spare tire when they were hit around 9:15 p.m.

“Ma’am, stop yelling, I need a location,” the operator can be heard telling Warrick’s daughter in portions of the call aired by NBC4.

» Listen to the full 911 call on The Baltimore Sun website.

The teen replies that they are alongside Interstate 295, but she doesn’t have a specific location. She asks several times for help, which the dispatcher says is on the way, but he presses for more information.

Warrick’s daughter tries to describe that both her father and his fiancée are unconscious: “He can’t move, he’s unconscious, I don’t know,” the girl tells the dispatcher.

As he asks more questions on the possible location and condition of the victims, the distraught girl repeats herself.

“OK, let’s stop whining,” the dispatcher says. “OK, let’s stop whining. It’s hard to understand you... two people were struck, correct?”

That rebuke led supervisors to reassign the dispatcher to duties that exclude public contact, Davies says. Officials investigated how the call was handled.

“The 911 dispatchers are trained to take control when they get a hysterical caller,” Davies told The Baltimore Sun. “However, he certainly used a poor choice of words. That 911 call did not meet our expectations of how we wanted that call handled and it didn’t meet the public’s expectations of how that call should have been handled.”

National Park Police have a person of interest who may have been driving the vehicle that hit Warrick and his fiancée, reports the Capital-Gazette, but no charges have been filed. Anyone with information is asked to call 202-610-8737.

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