ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — All Albuquerque Fire Department employees in emergency situations will undergo additional training after a dispatcher told a 911 caller trying to help a teenage shooting victim to “deal with it yourself.”
The department will start giving crisis intervention training to all firefighters and dispatchers next week, Fire Chief David Downey said Wednesday.
The dispatcher, Matthew Sanchez, should not have hung up on the 17-year-old caller in such a traumatic situation, Downey said.
“It was outlandish. Unforgivable,” he said. “You cannot call 911 and be treated like that. You can’t do it.”
In the recording made public this week, caller Esperanza Quintero snaps at Sanchez for repeatedly asking whether her friend Jaydon Chavez-Silver, 17, is breathing.
Chavez-Silver later died, police said. Sanchez had sent an ambulance before hanging up, and it arrived within minutes, officials said.
He resigned Tuesday.
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