News

Suit: Woman Dies on Floor After N.Y. Dispatcher Doesn`t Send Help

05/15/2012

She'd fallen and couldn't get up - and then she died after her desperate 911 call for help was ignored, a new Queens lawsuit charges.

The family of an elderly Rego Park woman whose body was discovered 36 hours after she'd taken a tumble and called 911 is suing the city for not sending police or an ambulance.

"Hello, I slipped and fell, and I need two officers to come pick me up," Florence Hollins, 72, weakly told an operator on Jan. 9, 2011, according to a recording of the 911 call.

"Why do you need them to pick you up?" an impatient-sounding operator repeated at the onset of the three-minute conversation.

"I slipped and fell," Hollins replied.

"I'm sorry, what are you saying ma'am?" the operator asked.

"I slipped and fell," Hollins said again.

The operator then asked her if she needed an ambulance, and the frail senior meekly replied, "No."

"I just need to be picked up," she explained.

After several more questions and answers, the operator told her, "Assistance will be there as soon as possible."

But that help never arrived, and Hollins was left on the floor in her apartment's bathroom early that Sunday bleeding from a head injury, the suit charges.

Florence wasn't discovered until a home health aide found her body 36 hours later, said her son, Clyde Hollins III, 45.

"She called 911, she asked for them to send someone, and they said that they would," said Clyde Hollins, who filed suit in Queens Supreme Court seeking unspecified damages from the city, the NYPD, Emergency Services Unit and the FDNY.

Hollins' family, including Florence's estranged husband, Clyde Jr., learned that a 911 call had even been made only after looking at her cellphone the day after the funeral and seeing the call.

Hollins' son and her daughter, Florence, 48, fought back tears when they listened to the call, they said.

"She sounds confused. She's disoriented. She had a lot of people she could call if she didn't think anyone was coming," the daughter said.

A city spokesman declined to comment, since the city had not yet received the filing.

ccarrega@nypost.com