A D.C. firefighter, shot over the weekend during a robbery, ended up calling his own unit for help after he could not connect to an operator for three minutes when calling 911.
Gary “Zeek” Dziekan was off-duty Saturday night when a 17-year-old boy wearing a mask approached him at 8th and C streets in Northeast, as he was walking home from a party.
Authorities said Monday that the teenager demanded Dziekan hand over his property and also unlock his phone. U.S. prosecutors said the teenager pushed a gun into Dziekan’s chest. Then, the firefighter grabbed the barrel of the gun and both males were shot during the struggle over the firearm.
Dziekan was shot in the chest and the 17-year-old was struck in the hand, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said.
Dziekan said about three minutes after he called 911, a good Samaritan offered his phone to call for Engine 18 directly.
The D.C. Office of Unified Communications, the District agency responsible for 911 calls, released a statement and a detailed chart of the 911 call activity.
The statement said at the time of the shooting, the D.C. Office of Unified Communications received a spike of calls for help, about 20 calls over 10 minutes, regarding a shooting between 8th and 9th streets in Northeast.
“The initial call for this shooting was received at 10:11:17 p.m. The call was processed and OUC dispatched D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department units at 10:12:22 p.m. and Metropolitan Police Department units at 10:13:25 p.m.”
“Due to the spike in call volume surrounding the incident, OUC processed calls for service as quickly as possible,” the office said in a statement. “We recognize that during incidents which create an increase in call volume, some callers are placed in queue, while call takers gather pertinent information and provide lifesaving direction to other callers.”
Pirro said that it did appear that help was on the way.
“It looks right now like it was pretty good, what you’ve got is the victim who clearly made a phone call then asked the neighbor to make a phone call, in the meantime there was help coming out,” Pirro said during a Monday news conference announcing that the 17-year-old was being charged as an adult.
“We are analyzing this situation and the call, what time it came in and how long it took to get the response out,” Pirro said.
The D.C. Office of Unified Communications came under scrutiny last year over outages and incidents involving delayed responses to 911 calls. In December, the agency’s director cited improvements that have been made to address the issues.
WTOP’s Abigail Constantino contributed to this report.
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