Dallas baby dies after multiple ‘ghost’ calls swamp 911 service

A baby in Texas died over the weekend and officials are saying it’s possibly due to glitches in a 911 system.

A 6-month-old boy named Brandon Alex died Saturday after his babysitter could not reach anyone through 911. “Ghost calls” have apparently jammed the city’s 911 system for months. InsideEdition.com’s Leigh Scheps (http://twitter.com/leightvreporter) has more. He called again, but was put on hold for 20 minutes. This means the emergency call center begins receiving hand-up calls from that same number and the loop can continue to happen over and over. “There’s nothing they can say to heal the pain that’s in my heart that I have to bury my six month old son on Monday”.

While awaiting a fix, city officials urged 911 callers to use alternatives to their T-Mobile phones.

This isn’t the only case in which a Dallas 911 call was handled poorly, a child who had fallen out of a day bed also died after the caregiver tried unsuccessfully to seek 911 assistance. Actual callers get put on hold while 911 operators play catch-up attempting to call back all the hangups.

Last October, a dozen states dealt with a swarm of “ghost calls” that overwhelmed 911 switchboards and made it impossible for legitimate calls to get through. It’s good that T-Mobile has now sent engineers down to Dallas to fix the issue, and hopefully they’ll get things fixed quickly.

Brandon was frantically rushed to hospital around an hour after the first phone call after his mum dashed home to try and save her dying son. Officials in Dallas say they don’t think their problems were caused by a cyberattack, but they don’t yet know for sure. “It took me to lose my son for y’all to call extra people, extra techs to be here. There’s no timetable for when the problem will be solved”, the company said.

Bridget had gone to attend the funeral of her nephew 19-year-old Drekeiston Alex. By the time she arrived, Alex said Brandon had stopped breathing.

It’s unclear if the recent rash of ghost call-related 911 outages are linked.

“Whenever a T-Mobile customer calls 911, it creates ghost calls that the system records as 911 hang ups”, writes Dallas ABC affiliate WFFA.

“Call takers returned each call, but were unable to reach the individual”.

‘This is an unacceptable situation and the citizens of Dallas deserve better, ‘ Broadnax said.

T-Mobile did not respond to a CNN request for comment.