“They just said, ‘This is 911. How can I help you?’ ” Li told KPRC. “I was trying to finish my sentence, and we got disconnected.”
He called again, and the police finally arrived on the scene.
But by then, the store’s manager was dead.
This story might sound familiar to Buster Pendley and Sharon Stephens, a married couple also living in Houston.
Earlier in March, a blood clot moved to Stephens’s lungs, causing her to lose consciousness. Her panicked husband attempted to perform CPR while calling 911.
“She was gasping, and I could feel her heart beating out of her chest, but I couldn’t get a pulse,” Pendley told KPRC.
“The 911 operator answered the phone, and she said, ‘This is Crenshanda, may I help you?’
“[I said,] ‘Wife’s passed out I need an ambulance,’ ” Pendley told the station. “She said, ‘Okay,’ and she hangs up on me.”
At the time, he didn’t tell his wife. Instead, he called 911 again, was put through and managed to get an ambulance in time.
Stephens may have escaped unscathed, but when she learned what happened, she was livid.
“I was furious he didn’t tell me what happened, because I would have, I mean, I would have gotten [up] from my hospital bed and gone to 911 and find out who did that to me,” she said.
That person, was Crenshanda Williams, 43, who was charged Tuesday with two misdemeanor counts of interfering with an emergency telephone call.
According to police, Williams did a whole lot more than hang up in these two instances, though. They claim that between October 2015 and March 2016, she had thousands of “short calls,” which lasted 20 seconds or less, much like the two above.
In one, a security guard called to report a pair of drivers drag racing on the highway.
“This is Officer Molten. I’m driving on 45 South right now and I am at . . .” the call began, but she immediately hung up, KIAH reported. Before she did, though, the recording included Williams responding, “Ain’t nobody got time for this. For real.”
Williams, who no longer works with the Houston Emergency Center where she was employed since 2014, allegedly told police that she would hang up on calls because she “did not want to talk to anyone at that time.”
She is due in court next week, NBC reported. It’s unclear whether she has entered a plea or retained a lawyer. The charges carry a potential sentence of one year in jail.