SUMNER, Ill. - A little boy is in critical condition tonight following an incident Monday night that could have cost him his life.
But more importantly, because of a lack of critical resources in Lawrence County when it comes to the E-911 system, the child could have died on the spot if it weren't for a local man who is on the fire department and knows how to respond...even if the rest of those who were supposed to be assisting were quiet.
We're still collecting the full story, but what we've been told goes like this.
The two-year-old boy was playing with his brothers near a water-filled ditch on the 100 block of East Locust Street in Sumner (Lawrence County), this at about 8 p.m. last night, Monday, June 11. There had been heavy rains yesterday in Lawrence and across the region, and the water was reportedly really rushing.
The little boy somehow fell into the water-flowing ditch, and was quickly pulled under and up against or partially into a culvert that the water was being funneled through.
How much of him was actually under the water isn't being said.
However, a woman (it might've been the boy's mom, but we don't have that info) called 911, and the response came in the form of Brent Parrott, who lives right there in Sumner. Parrot is Christy Fire Protection District Fire Chief and was until recently the former assistant at the county's E-911 system.
Which is a problem. Not Parrott, but the county's E-911 system. It's BEEN a problem since taxpayers started paying for it in 2005. They paid and paid and paid and nothing came of it until a couple of years ago, when a state mandate ordered the sheriff's department to turn over 911 calls to a dispatch center in Bridgeport that wasn't quite ready to go (after 10 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funding). To this day, it's not completely operational, at least to the point that it's supposed to be according to mandates.
And some of that came out last night when Parrott was dealing with this incident.
Parrott was heard radioing to dispatch at least five times asking for an ambulance and a LifeFlight ETA (estimated time of arrival). There was no answer heard from dispatch, which likely accounts for Parrott having to holler to them many times. Finally, the ambulance driver actually answered Parrott himself. There was to be no air evac, however; the storms that produced the rain made flight too risky.
Ultimately, an ambulance transported the little boy out of the area, and he was taken to Riley Children's Hospital in Indianapolis. It's reported that efforts by the first responders were what saved his life. His condition is listed as critical.
And "critical" can also describe the state of things with the county's E-911 system.
We were advised in early May that at that time, Lawrenceville's fire department had just purchased a new repeater and all new radios, with no coordination whatsoever with E-911. This is the bailiwick of the reprehensible Mike Mefford, Lawrenceville fire chief who used to be the city police chief and fortunately missed a bid to win sheriff a few years back. When the new radios were installed, there was discovered a problem, ostensibly with the repeaters...and the Lawrenceville fire department couldn't communicate with other fire departments. Whether there were other agencies they couldn't communicate with, we've not been able to discover yet...but the whole thing has created a dangerous situation for the county.
So besides Parrott, and others like him who actually care about people who might be in a dire situation - like the little boy last night - Lawrence is still populated with the same kind of indifferent or self-aggrandizing pukes we've been writing about there for FIFTEEN YEARS...because the same dolts are in charge, and no one wants to change anything, no one wants to work together - every agency wants to be "the" agency - and the humble taxpayer who is funding all of it with very little say (not that too many in Lawrence care, go to meetings, vote...or even pay taxes, as the county is one of the more impoverished in downstate) is the one getting the shaft.
A cursory glimpse at this issue might make a person believe that one situation (the nearly-drowned child) doesn't necessarily have to do with the other (the abject buffoonery of elected or appointed officials). But our sources in Lawrence assure us the two are irretrievably connected. So we're going to be looking into it in the coming weeks. In the meantime, don't go near swollen ditches or rushing water, no matter where you are...but bear in mind that in Lawrence, there's a significant lack of anything resembling appropriate emergency services support, so if such a thing happens to you or someone in your family...you might not be so fortunate as this baby was to have a Brent Parrott nearby.