Man Found Dead in Office 10 Hours After 911 Phone Glitch Confuses Rescuers

Kaafee Billah walked into his Gaithersburg office shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday. The 39-year-old sales representative, who had recently started working at the medical company MedImmune Inc., made the first call from his desk at 9:02. Roughly 40 minutes later, he called 911 to say he needed medical help.

Almost 10 hours passed before someone found his body lying on the floor.

Police say an apparent phone glitch sent emergency personnel to the wrong address, leading them to believe that the 911 call was unfounded.

"There is no way at this time to say if he would have survived the event if rescue personnel had reached him in a timely manner," the police officer who documented his death wrote in a preliminary report. "The error is in the technology of the company phone system."

Billah had a brief conversation with a 911 dispatcher, police said.

"He was able to communicate a few words before there was no longer communication with him," police spokeswoman Lucille Baur said.

Pete Piringer, a spokesman for Montgomery County's Fire and Rescue Service, said: "The caller struggled with the information. He did say he needed an ambulance for chest pains."

Billah was not able to provide an address, Baur said. When 911 dispatchers in Montgomery County are unable to get an exact location from a caller or when they receive a call from someone who hangs up, they make an effort to identify the location and send help.

A dispatcher sent emergency personnel to the address determined by computerized caller identification: 35 W. Watkins Mill Road, one of several MedImmune buildings in the area. But Billah's office was in an adjacent building: 25 W. Watkins Mill Road.

The emergency personnel "searched the premises but did not find the victim," according to the police report. Piringer said they looked for six to seven minutes.

About 7 p.m., 911 dispatchers received another call from the MedImmune building at 25 W. Watkins, this time from a worker who had found Billah's body on the floor.

The medical examiner's office in Baltimore said yesterday that the cause of death remained under investigation. Police said there is no evidence of foul play.