Ocean City Maryland beach hummer accident

[PARAGON]

911 center releases second tape in Assateague crash



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Jennifer Lehman
Staff Writer

(March 18, 2005) Geographical coordinates that OnStar provided Emergency Services the evening of Feb. 5 were not given to Assateague Park rangers, a new 911 tape reveals.
However, whether those coordinates would have helped in the search for 25-year-old Adam Starkey and 24-year-old Jennifer Holly Ashe remains unclear.

The tape, which was released by Emergency Services this week, is a recording of the phone call between a 911 operator and an Assateague Park ranger. The call takes place after Emergency Services spoke to an OnStar representative, who informed them of a distress call from a vehicle located on the national seashore.

OnStar provided rough coordinates — 38.21 latitude and -75.14 longitude — to the 911 operator, but those numbers were not passed onto park rangers at the time.

“The incident we have is going on at the National Parks Service,” the 911 operator informed an Assateague Park ranger. “An emergency button was pushed to OnStar on a vehicle that’s a Hummer somewhere out there and they gave us coordinates, but we have no idea where this is.”

“OK. Did they say if they were on a road or on the beach,” asked the park ranger.

“They said it was on Assateague National Seashore and they gave us coordinates. That’s all they gave us,” replied the 911 operator.

In an earlier report, Robert Fudge, chief of visitor services for Assateague Island National Seashore, said the coordinates from OnStar were not an exact pinpoint of a location, but more of a general area.

“[The rangers] investigated with what they were given,” Fudge said on Feb. 23. “They looked in an area they thought was an appropriate area. It does sound like that it was very hard for them to get an exact location.”

According to Fudge, the park rangers did a thorough search of an area where off-road driving on the beach is permitted.

“They went on an off-road vehicle zone to find anybody that needed help,” Fudge said, adding during their search the park rangers assisted a couple whose vehicle was stuck in the sand. Starkey’s Hummer, however, was located in an area not permitted for off-road vehicles.

Surfers stumbled upon Starkey’s body lying next to his partially submerged 2004 Hummer the morning of Feb. 6. The next day, a park ranger found the body of Ashe.

Autopsy results revealed that Starkey and Ashe died of hypothermia, with contributory injuries from the accident.

Charles Waechter, an attorney representing families of both victims, continues to question why park rangers did such a limited search of the island when they received word of a distress call.

“How much time did [the park rangers] spend assisting the other vehicle and what did they do after that?” Waechter asked.

The recently released tape also reveals that no deputy from the Worcester County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to the island that evening.

“How far away was your deputy?” the park ranger asked.

“Well, we cancelled him. Do you want us to go ahead and send him back in?” the 911 operator replied.

“…I will go ahead and respond myself,” the park ranger said. “You can tell him to disregard.”

Once the surfers discovered Starkey’s body and vehicle, nearly 12 hours after park rangers were alerted, a multi-agency search and rescue operation was activated.