Published: December 01, 2007 11:33 pm      

Questions linger over the handling of trail shooting

EBENSBURG — Five Cambria County 911 workers will be disciplined for the handling of a shooting incident on a national historic trail in Conemaugh Township, even as officials scramble to tie in expensive technology that they highly touted too soon.

At the same time, the National Park Service and local police departments continue to investigate whether the Nov. 4 shooting was accidental or deliberate.

No arrests have been made.

No one was injured during the almost one-hour of shooting at the Staple Bend Tunnel hiking trail. Terrified hikers hid in a ditch and repeatedly called 911, where dispatchers kept asking their address and, amid the sound of bullets, said, “There’s nothing else we can do.”

Police never did arrive, and the incident prompted outrage from the hikers and a public outcry.

On Thursday, President Commissioner P.J. Stevens said that the county’s internal investigation was finished and that three dispatchers and two members of management would be disciplined.

Citing the confidentiality of personnel law, Stevens would not describe specific actions, except to say that “discipline will be equal to the degree of participation in the incident.”

He also said that technical upgrades to the 911 system, which county officials boasted about in October, are not fully operational.

“The county has the capability of GIS mapping, but it’s not completely ready yet,” he said.

That contradicts a county announcement made in October, when the $2 million mapping project was described as being used by county 911 for dispatching.

And another announcement in October – that a $2.6 million upgrade allows 911 to pinpoint a cell-phone caller’s precise location within 15 seconds – also may have been overstated.

“As of now, our mapping system is not tied into our CAD (computer-aided dispatch) system,” said 911 Director Carol Peretin. “When the entire system is completed, when someone calls in on a cell phone, the mapping will pop up.”

In the meantime, dispatchers have mapping at their individual consoles and can plot coordinates when a call comes in, Peretin said.

Peretin said that 911 had determined the location of the hikers, even though dispatchers kept asking the hikers for the street address and borough or township they were in.

To ask those questions is 911’s policy and is not likely to change, Peretin said.

The hikers made it out on their own, and have said they still feel like they are on their own.

“We have not heard one single word from the county since this happened,” said a Portage woman who was hiking that day with her husband and was pinned down for 47 minutes during the shooting.

“The National Park Service has been wonderful, but we’ve heard nothing from the county,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified due to fear for her welfare. “I never expected them to admit that anything was wrong, but someone just could have said they were sorry we had to go through this.”

Because the trail is on federal property, park rangers could have been called to the scene.

Until this incident came to light, however, rangers were not plugged in to the 911 system as first responders.

Instead, 911 called Conemaugh Township and East Taylor Township police, and each thought the shooting was occurring in the other’s territory, officials have said.

When the callers asked 911 dispatchers why police were not responding, they were told: “There’s nothing else we can do.”

Chief Park Ranger Tom Steindurf said Thursday that this is the first time a shooting has been reported at Staple Bend, and he still is investigating.

Rangers are now in the 911 dispatch system for federal property.