REGINA — Help never came for four people stuck on a logging road in northern Saskatchewan because a civilian RCMP dispatcher got distracted and forgot to send a tow truck.
And when the tow truck didn’t arrive, one of the women tried to walk 60 kilometres for help before dying on the side of a highway.
Details of the circumstances that lead to Kerri Canepotatoe’s death came to light Thursday when the RCMP made public the results of an investigation into how three 911 calls from the stranded motorists were handled.
Chief Supt. Randy Beck said the review found that the dispatcher, who has been on the job for 33 years, made a mistake.
“The very next moment that this call was dropped, where the cellphone coverage was lost, the next call came in which was a robbery. His attention was diverted to dealing with the caller on that robbery and subsequently erred in not dispatching,” said Beck.
“It was a simple human error.”
The calls were made on April 8, when Canepotatoe, Melissa Rabbitskin and two children left Prince Albert heading for Loon Lake, near the Alberta boundary. They got lost and made a wrong turn. Their car got bogged down in mud and water on a logging road near Big River.
The stranded travellers tried calling 911 three times. Only one of those calls made it through to an RCMP call centre in Prince Albert.
The next morning, Canepotatoe, 18, left the car to walk for help. She died of exposure, but it wasn’t until the discovery of her body by the side of a secondary highway on April 12, and it being positively identified on April 15, that finally spurred the search that found Rabbitskin and the two children, who were left shivering for a week in their stranded car.
Still, the dispatcher should have sent the call to a tow truck operator or to a police officer to respond.
Beck said the RCMP changed procedures at the beginning of September so that supervisors must review calls if no one is dispatched. He said the force and the operator involved feel “terrible.”