Victoria police communications staff were frustrated Thursday after being overloaded with a spate of abandoned 911 calls from the same cellular phone.
Police said 129 abandoned 911 calls came in, one short of the 130 calls for service that police responded to on New Year’s Eve.
The abandoned 911 calls from a pay-as-you-go cellphone started just after 9 a.m. Thursday and continued throughout the day, tying up resources as officers were dispatched to search for someone in distress in the area of associated cellphone towers.
Communications centre staff tried to determine the location of the caller and make sure that he or she did not need help.
The calls finally stopped, likely as the account ran out of credit, or the cellphone battery ran down,
“It was challenging for our call takers as they were constantly putting other callers on hold when these 911 calls came in,” 911 communications centre supervisor Nadja Hesser said in a statement.
