KINGSTON -- Disciplinary action is expected to be taken in Luzerne County against a 911 dispatcher who sent emergency crews to the wrong house last week.
This is the second time this has happened this year and the second time the incident ended in a death.
We expected action to be taken against a dispatcher Monday but, so far that hasn't happened.
A woman in Kingston learned from us that someone from the 911 center sent an ambulance crew to the wrong house, and she believes the mistake may have cost her brother a chance to survive a heart attack.
The family living at a Gates Avenue home in Kingston hoped the holidays might bring needed cheer. But they tell us on Thanksgiving morning, Vincent Marcario, 46, was upstairs complaining of chest pains. He struggled to breathe.
"When I realized it was an oxygen problem, and that his heart was in trouble, I called 911 immediately," said the victim's sister Mary Hays.
Hays says she told the dispatcher at the Luzerne County 911 center that her home was near Kirby Park.
But instead of sending an ambulance to Gates Avenue in Kingston, sources say a dispatcher sent a crew to Gates Street in Wilkes-Barre, to the other side of the Susquehanna River, where there was no emergency Thanksgiving morning.
After the apparent mistake, the dispatcher eventually got an ambulance crew to Kingston, but the mistake cost precious time.
"It was at least 20 minutes. I mean it seemed like forever, especially doing CPR," said Hays.
By that time, Hays says, her brother lost consciousness, and he never regained it.
"To find out they could have been here and they would have been here, that's upsetting. My brother was a young man."
Vincent Marcario was 46.
When we tried to get a comment from the Luzerne County 911 center in Hanover Township, we were told there are no comments.
Fred Rosencrans, the Luzerne county 911 director, later confirmed the dispatcher's apparent mistake is being investigated.
And this isn't the first investigation of its kind.
Earlier this year, a Luzerne County 911 operator was fired after sending a crew to Conyngham borough near West Hazleton while a home burned in Conyngham Township in Mocanaqua, killing the woman inside.
In both cases, the mistake cost emergency crews precious minutes.
"I know mistakes happen, but my brother was only 46," Hays added.
Mary Hays says she would hate to see a dispatcher lose his or her job, during the holidays, but she says this mistake hurts deeply, and she will always wonder and never know if her brother would have survived if the 911 operator got an ambulance to right address.
