No 911 Dispatch Call Found On Accident Apparent Mistake Left Man Stuck In Car Almost 2 Days

A bungle at the Bonner Communications Center left an injured man trapped in his pickup with his dead friend for nearly two days.

Sandpoint Police Chief Bill Kice, who oversees the consolidated 911 center, said his investigation into the April 13 incident found that no calls were made by the dispatch center for an Idaho State Police officer, or other officers, to check out the reported accident.

The dispatcher working the early morning of April 13 previously had told Kice that she dispatched ISP to the scene of the accident.

Gene Peterson, who lives just off Highway 57 near the site of the accident, called 911 to report that he heard a loud crash - loud enough to wake him up - at about 1:30 a.m. He said the dispatcher didn’t ask many questions.

“I waited up until after 3 o’clock,” Peterson said. “There was one car that stopped there.”

The car may have been an off-duty sheriff’s deputy on a newspaper route who stopped to check out fresh skid marks. He could find no other evidence of the wreck, except a rearview mirror, and made a mental note of it for later.

Neil C. Sanderson, 23, was trapped in his pickup until the evening of April 14, shortly after the deputy came back on duty and was informed that Sanderson was missing. Passenger Howard L. Johnson Jr., 20, died in the wreck.

An autopsy report found that Johnson died within seconds or minutes of the accident, according to Bonner County Coroner Dale Coffelt. The autopsy also found that Johnson had an alcohol level well-above the legal limit, Coffelt said.

After the wreck was discovered, both Kice and the ISP listened to their dispatch recordings from that morning to try to find the dispatch call to ISP. No calls were recorded.

The dispatcher did not call a Bonner County Sheriff’s deputy because none was on duty in that part of the county.

On Thursday, Kice said he had also reviewed the center’s long-distance billing, and could find no record of the call there, either.

“Now we start reviewing our internal matters, the procedures and protocols that we follow and find out if there’s anything that may have allowed this to happen,” Kice said.

At this time, Kice said, he has no plans for disciplining the dispatcher, who has not been named.

“I need to support her and the morale of this whole department,” he said. He called the incident “a grave error.”

“When you’re in this line of business, mistakes are more severe,” he said.

The Idaho State Police has not charged Sanderson, although he, too, is believed to have been drinking that night, according to witnesses.

In a telephone interview from his parent’s home near Napa, Calif., Sanderson denied being drunk that night, and claimed that the accident happened after he hit a fallen tree on a side road while driving to check out a fishing hole.

But the evidence points to a high-speed wreck on state Highway 57, according to the ISP.

Sanderson suffered a crushed face, a broken jaw, a collapsed lung and lost his ear in the wreck. He guessed he was unconscious for four or five hours after the accident.

“I got water from condensation. I put a plastic bag through a hole in the floorboard,” he said. “I got a couple of drinks … enough to stay alive….

“I was just starting to get well enough to try to pry myself out of the truck when the officer found me.”

Sanderson said he wondered why no one had come earlier to the accident scene.

The incident came in the midst of complaints from some law enforcement and emergency agencies about the newly consolidated 911 center. Prior to October 1998, the city and county operated separate dispatch centers.

Shortly after the accident, the city hired a consultant to review the operations at the consolidated center.

The consultant made several recommendations this week to the city. Some of the suggestions have already been put in place, such as appointing a dispatch supervisor, increased training and staggering shifts for dispatchers.

Kice also has made increased staffing and higher wages a priority for the center. All the measures are designed to provide better service, lower stress on the existing staff and help prevent errors.

Kice described the dispatcher who worked the morning of April 13 as highly trained and loyal, “who just made a mistake, or appears to have made a mistake. She thinks she followed the process.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: TIMELINE Record checks The accident was reported at 1:30 a.m. April 13. A dispatcher has said ISP was notified. Bonner County was not called. No deputies were in the area. The wreck was discovered the evening of April 14. Sandpoint police and ISP checked dispatch recordings from April 13. No calls were recorded. No record of the call was found on the center’s long-distance bill.