Lorain County 911 dispatch sustained "temporary malfunction" on morning Sheffield police lieutenant died

At 7:27 a.m. on Nov. 21, Kaitlin Bober called 911 to report that her husband, Aaron Bober, a lieutenant with the Sheffield Village Police department, had collapsed and was unresponsive. Just over a minute into the call, a Lorain County 911 dispatcher told Kaitlin Bober that an ambulance was on the way. Kaitlin Bober and her mother were able to roll Aaron Bober over and Kaitlin began performing CPR on her husband, 911 call records show. She continued to do so for more than seven minutes before paramedics from Sheffield fire arrived at the home on Kevin Street and take over, 11 minutes and 56 seconds after the call was placed. Bober, who was off duty, was taken to University Hospitals in Cleveland, where he later died after an apparent cardiac arrest. County and local fire officials agree that the cause of the delay in the response to the home was a temporary malfunction of Lorain County 911's automated emergency dispatching system, but it is less clear how much this outage affected the response to Bober's emergency and others. Lorain County 911 handles 911 calls to almost all the communities in the county and dispatches fire crews, police and emergency medical services, or EMS, as necessary for each emergency. How this dispatching is done depends on the department and service requested, but the county alerts the Sheffield Fire Departments of calls for service through an automated dispatching system from Locution Systems Inc. According to 911 Director Kurt Scholl, dispatchers take calls, plug the information into a computer-assisted dispatch, or CAD, system and that system then puts out an automated message containing that information over both the radio and the station speakers of the department which should respond. On Nov. 21, Scholl said, the Locution system stopped automatically sending alerts out to departments. He said that 911 was not aware of the problem until Sheffield fire radioed in asking if they had a call, more than a minute and a half after Kaitlin Bober's 911 call. "The issue was that (Locution) was showing up as running on our end … but the system for automatic toning was not going through," Scholl said. "We could do it manually, so that is what we ended up having to do. Of the 23 fire departments in our county, only a handful use it. I want to say it was a glitch, but not a glitch, because we didn't know about it." Dispatchers sent out alerts manually after the outage was discovered, and did so until the system was fully operational again around 10 a.m. On Nov. 21, dispatch relayed Kaitlin Bober's call through Locution and, simultaneously, through the northeast radio channel that covers Sheffield Lake, Sheffield, Avon and Avon Lake. But due to the outage, the call did not immediately come through to the department, Chief Scott Gilles said. Instead, the captain of the department's shift that morning saw a notification about the call on the Active911 app, which the department uses as a redundancy measure, Gilles said. He then successfully radioed the County 911 to confirm the department had an active call and manually "rounded up" firefighters who were on duty to respond to Bober's home. Kaitlyn Bober's call was made at 7:27 a.m. Sheffield fire confirmed the call was accurate 1 minute and 38 seconds later. The first ambulance arrived at Bober's home at 7:38 a.m. and paramedics then entered the home and took over care of Aaron Bober. "It just added time to our response," Gilles said. "We went from typically a 1 to 1-and-a-half minute response when everything's working as it should, to essentially a 4 minute and 32 second response." Gilles said under a standard response time, the department would have reached the home about 4 minutes quicker. "After we put them on the call, a minute and so many seconds later they came across the radio, which is a normal time for that time of the morning," Scholl said. "(Sheffield fire) asked if they had a call, we told them yes, they acknowledged who was going to be responding and then they were en route a few minutes later. Once they acknowledge the call, it is out of our hands for their response time … I have no control over how fast they drive or when they get out of the station." At 10:01 a.m., Gilles said 911 Dispatch notified the departments that Locution was back in service. But dispatch did not contact the department directly before Bober's call came in, he said, which would have given it notice to establish its own redundancies to cover the outage. Lorain County Administrator Jeff Armbruster said that the county does have safeguards in place if systems go down, including the Active911 system, which did inform Sheffield of the call. "I can only say that 911 followed the procedures that they had," Armbruster said. "(Scholl) is looking into whether some mistakes were made;, I don't believe there were. We all rely on electronic devices that should be working, but if they are not working you have to have backups. We used the backup." Although the call was relayed to the department through the app, Gilles said not getting the initial dispatch right away and over the radio still added time to its response. "Any delay in response is unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable," Gilles said. "Whether it be Lt. Bober or Mrs. Smith that lives down the street, it's unacceptable to have any form of delay to any type of call … the people are calling us and expect a certain thing, and we strive to meet those goals and not delay anything." The outage was not limited to Sheffield, or even the northeast radio channel. Elyria Safety Service Director Chris Pyanowski said the Elyria Fire Department, which also uses Locution, had two emergency calls of its own on the morning of Nov. 21 that were not announced by radio. Both incidents were also caught when firefighters checked the Active911 app, but the first call, which came at 5:44 a.m., was not noticed for several minutes. LifeCare Ambulance did receive a dispatch from the county for that emergency, so there was no problem with service for the resident, Pyanowski said. Pyanowski said he has asked to meet with county officials to better understand what happened and see how it can be avoided in the future. Locution has gone down before, Gilles said, and he has previously expressed concerns about these outages with county officials. Those concerns have not been addressed, he said. Though he has been with Lorain County 911 for more than 27 years, Scholl was only appointed director in mid-October and said he had not received any complaints during his short time at the helm. Armbruster said that the county and dispatch center are always working to add redundancies and improve service. "We are in full support of Kurt and (Deputy Director Mike Davis) as the new management over there," Armbruster said. "We are constantly training, we are constantly working and trying to make the system even that much better for all of us in Lorain County. I don't look forward to a failure like this with electronics, but I can tell you we are working hard to make it seamless and make sure the backups we have in place work." The county experienced an unrelated software issues last year, when 911 phone service went down for approximately two-and-a-half hours in November 2024. Unlike the Locution problem a year later, that outage was caused by staffers intentionally shutting off power to allow for upgrades. However, that incident also led to then-911 Director Rob Berner arguing that the county needed better backups in place for some of its systems. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com. Contact Richard Perrins at (440) 687-5172 or email rperrins@chroniclet.com.