Good News: They're Saved! Bad News: You Could Have Been Murdered

Link to said news story

A few quotes from the daughter

Quote :

The afternoon of October 8, my 70-year-old mother got a call from American Medical Alarms asking her to check on an elderly neighbor whose alarm had gone off, and who hadn't responded when they tried to contact her. My mother ran over to the woman's house and heard loud noises coming from inside. She pounded on the door and called the woman's name, and two men carrying knives ran out, jumped a fence, and escaped down an alley. Police and paramedics got there soon afterward, and found the woman inside, beaten and bloody. She was taken to the hospital and is now doing well.

Quote :

So while things turned out OK in this case, the fact remains that a medical alarm company sent my mother to intervene in a violent home invasion. Of course, they didn't do it intentionally, and I'll grant that it's a reasonable assumption that the alarm was for a medical emergency.

Quote :

But this wasn't some well-meaning private party who didn't have time to stop and think about all the possible scenarios. This is a corporation that exists primarily to serve as a middleman between their customers and local emergency services. This is all they do, and their customers pay them a lot of money to provide this questionable service. As such, they should have already considered the possibility that something like this could happen, and have policies in place to prevent it.

On the one hand, hooray for 70-year-old woman going over to check on a neighbor and likely saving her life by doing so. However, what exactly would have stopped those burglars from turning their attention onto her? She's 70 years old; I sincerely doubt she would have had the capability of defending herself against 2 knife-wielding assailants and then there would have been two victims instead of one.

The intention of the AMA may have been noble but would they have accepted responsibility if the neighbor had gotten attacked or killed while checking on her neighbor? Also: how did they get her number and how were they able to prove they were who they said they were over the phone? This is one of those examples where the end result was positive but very easily could have gone the opposite way and ended up as a tragedy.

It's the American Medical Alarm-company. Keyword being: Medical. While the system probably should have some fail-safe-plans for emergencies that aren't medical, I don't think we have enough facts to blame company for being careless.
According to their website, their device works as following:

It's all there in the manual wrote:

Basically what would happen is you would have a little pendant that you wear either around your neck, or on your wrist. It is water resistant so you can wear it in the shower or tub. The important thing is if you ever need help, all you have to do is push the button you are wearing. About 40 seconds later our central station is going to begin to have a two way conversation with you through a little console that is plugged in at your house. At this time you may say something to us like - I don't need an ambulance but would you please call my son or daughter, neighbor, or friend? - It's not always a paramedic emergency and we are going to do pretty much whatever it is you ask us to do. However, if we are unable to speak with you or you say it's an emergency, we would immediately dispatch the local paramedics to your house.

If the central station only heard stumbling noises, or heavy, anxious breathing, it's very logical for them to assume this old lady fell or got otherwise incapacitated. Since they probably had the neighbour on their "To Call"-list, they might have thought it wise to let her check as well. In this case, there's just too much unknown to make a proper analysis of the situation. I mean, what message was transmitted from the burgled woman's house? Did the station call the paramedics as well? Was the neighbour explicitly told to make a round to the house, or did they just tell her to keep an eye on the house? It's probably best to reserve judgement if you can't quite distinguish whether this was just a freak accident or something that could have been prevented.

Are we going to have to wait until there's an incident of an actual death caused by this sort of situation before plans are enacted to prevent that sort of thing from happening?

Aggie wrote:

Are we going to have to wait until there's an incident of an actual death caused by this sort of situation before plans are enacted to prevent that sort of thing from happening?

If this story gets to enough people, possibly not. This may end up being a good thing in the long run. A weak spot in the system has been discovered and will hopefully be more properly shored up before another incident occurs.

...Hopefully.