Toronto family waited on hold with 911 for minutes while child choked

An Etobicoke family is speaking out after spending minutes on hold with 911 while their infant was choking.

Lianne and Tim Ray's infant stopped breathing and lost consciousness on April 15 after he began choking on cereal at the dinner table.

But when Tim Ray called 911, he was put on hold for five minutes and 23 seconds, according to Toronto police. In a panic, he hung up and tried to save his son himself. 

"We thought he was gone. Everybody around us thought he was gone," Lianne Ray said. "We're just, even still, not sure how we managed to keep him alive in that moment without having any outside assistance from 911 or a paramedic."

Police say the 911 call centre couldn't call back because the phone that had called them was unregistered. The family called again two minutes later and that call was answered in five minutes and 19 seconds, according to police, then transferred to paramedics.

By that time, Asher's father had dislodged the obstruction from his son's throat and resuscitated him — after the little boy had gone more than three minutes without being able to breathe, according to the family. 

A CBC Toronto investigation published in March found the average wait time of a 911 call in Toronto got worse from 2021 to 2022. In the six months of data analyzed for that investigation, October 2022 had the longest average wait time of 76 seconds — the Rays spent 323 seconds waiting for their first call to be picked up.

Toronto police hiring 20 new 911 operators

The couple is speaking out in the hopes that sharing their story might spare someone else from a similar experience. 

"That desperate, panicked feeling of realizing you're watching your child die, and you're alone, and no help is coming, is something that I don't want any parent to have to go through," Ray said. 

The Toronto Police Service is in the process of hiring 20 new 911 operators, who need about a year to train, said spokesperson Stephanie Sayer.

"Every second counts in an emergency and we are committed to improving 911 wait times to ensure that we are there when Torontonians need us most," Sayer said in an email. 

After Toronto police transferred the Rays's call to paramedics, it was answered in less than two minutes, according to a spokesperson for Toronto Paramedic Services. 

Call response time got worse in 2022

According to the 2022 auditor general's report, the Toronto Police Service strives to meet a voluntary National Emergency Number Association minimum standard of answering 90 per cent of all 911 calls within 15 seconds. The CBC investigation found police achieved that standard on only 11 days in 2022. 

The monthly average wait time went up in each of the six months in 2022 that CBC compared to 2021. In July 2022, the wait time increased five-fold, from 19 seconds to an average of one minute in 2022.

In the six months of 911 logs from 2021 that CBC Toronto reviewed, the longest individual wait times reached 10 minutes and two seconds. Toronto police redacted individual wait times in the 2022 data it provided through a Freedom of Information request.

Last June, Toronto's auditor general found staffing shortages and a high volume of calls were at the heart of delays at the city's 911 call centre.  

"It defeats the whole purpose of having a 911 service, if you're being put on hold like you're calling some regular customer service line," Tim Ray said.

Many parents live in fear of their child choking on food, said Dr. Daniel Flanders of the Toronto-based Kindercare Pediatrics. One effective way to allay that fear, he said, is by being prepared and knowing CPR for infants and adults.

That's part of the reason the Rays wanted to speak out — to highlight the importance of parents being trained to provide CPR, they say.

Asher has since recovered and is doing well, his mom said. But the experience has left a lingering impact on her.

"I feel scared all the time. I feel alone. I feel panicked that it might happen again and that we might be in a situation where we need help and we can't get it," she said.