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A year later, families await answers on fatalities
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EDWABY MEGHAN V. MALLOY
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 11/08/2009

EDWABY MEGHAN V. MALLOY

Staff Writer

Two local families continue to seek answers from state public safety officials after alleging their loved ones died in accidents after 911 calls for help were mishandled.

Darren Duncan died a year ago today when he was struck by two vehicles in Chelsea.

Amanda Edwards died a week later in a two-car accident in Augusta.

Three weeks before she died, Edwards told her mother how she wanted to be remembered when she passed away. It was an unusual conversation, her mother, Rebecca Renaud, said, considering the girl was a gregarious 17-year-old cheerleader at Erskine Academy. But "she had read a story about someone who died because of reckless driving and it had got her thinking," Renaud said.

Edwards was a passenger in a car that lost control on wet pavement and collided with another vehicle on Stone Road in Augusta near the Vassalboro line.

Renaud, of Vassalboro, alleged a lack of communication between 911 dispatchers at the Central Maine Regional Communications Center and Delta Ambulance may have cost her daughter her life, and took away the opportunity for Edwards' organs to be donated.

"It took an ambulance 32 minutes to reach my daughter," Renaud said. "There was no clear communication between (dispatchers and Delta Ambulance)."

Transcripts show three dispatchers in the communications center unaware another dispatcher was handling the same emergency.

Dispatchers from the Central Maine Regional Communications Center made the first call to Delta Ambulance four minutes after the first 911 call was made. An ambulance was sent from Waterville because the Augusta ambulance was busy on another call.

Transcripts show that a Delta employee, who said she had spoken to at least three dispatchers about the same accident, asked a dispatcher if there was "any way ta (sic) have just one of you guys calling me?...'Cos (sic) that makes it a little less confusing for everybody."

Renaud said she sought the transcripts of the 911 call three months after Edwards' death and received them two months later.

She and Edwards' stepfather, Parrish Renaud, then started calling the Department of Public Safety for answers on why an ambulance took more than half an hour to respond to an accident in which a patient was described as "critical."

"(Department of Public Safety legal counsel) Chris Parr has been totally unresponsive," Renaud said. "I know he's busy, and I didn't expect instant gratification by any means. But, for months I would call, call, call; I'd e-mail, and (got) nothing."

Renaud said Department of Public Safety officials stopped returning her e-mails after she requested a meeting with Parr; Cliff Wells, director of consolidated emergency services for the Department of Public Safety; and her private attorney.

Wells said he unable to speak to allegations made by Edwards' family, citing a "possibility of litigation."

Parr said he was not the correct individual to respond to Renaud's requests, aside from the 911 transcripts.

"In response to (Renaud's) request, and in accordance in Maine law, we provided the records to her, as well as to the attorney who represents the estate of her late daughter," Parr said in an e-mail. "When Ms. Renaud subsequently contacted my office with question about the content of the records that the department provided, I referred her to other individuals who I thought would be able to answer those questions."

"There will always be questions," Renaud said. "But, I think I have reached the point where I'm going to get all the answers I'm going to get."

Darren Duncan was leaving Chelsea's Crystal Falls event hall in early on Nov. 8, 2008, when he was struck by two vehicles in the middle of Route 17.

When rescue crews arrived, he was dead, investigators said.

Deputies from the Kennebec County Sheriff's Office later filed complaints to Sheriff Randall Liberty about how an initial call to 911 -- made one hour before Duncan died -- was handled.

In the allegation, deputies said a man, later identified as Ed Luszczki, called 911 to report a man lying in the middle of Route 17. During the call, the man, identified as Duncan by investigators, stood up and started to walk off into the darkness.

Duncan's sisters, Dawn Fecteau and Lisa Basinet, have publicly criticized the dispatch center's handling of 911 calls about Duncan, who lived in Windsor.

Fecteau argued that a deputy should have been sent to check on Duncan, particularly after Luszczki indicated to a dispatcher he thought Duncan "had too much hooch, I guess," according to a transcript of the call. The sisters also took offense to a comment made by a dispatcher implying Duncan lying in the road was "a good way to become a speed bump."

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Anne Jordan later defended the dispatchers answering 911 calls that night in front of the Legislature's Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.

Clifford Wells, director of consolidated emergency communications for the Department of Public Safety, said the circumstances involved in Duncan's death were investigated and disciplinary action was taken. No one was terminated.

"We are shocked to learn that, a year later, the person who handled the call that night is still employed as a dispatcher," Fecteau said recently. "It is unconscionable."

The family, she added, remains "angry and we still have questions about that night."

The most glaring question, Fecteau said, is if "the state of Maine going to, or in the process of, adopting a standard protocol on how all calls are handled. I read about that standardized training (in the newspaper), and I thought, 'Gee, what a novel idea.'"

Renaud does not believe changes at the Central Maine Regional Communications Center will be significant.

"Maybe there are changes on paper and things will be different for awhile," she said. "But real changes? No."

Meghan V. Malloy -- 623-3811, ext. 431

mmalloy@centralmaine.com

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