The Primetime report said that they had taken it several days before (!). I was astonished that meth could impair people for that long. Is this plausible?
Maybe they meant that they had taken it over the course of several days? Or for several days?
Anyone who has ever (foolishly, I might add) spent hours trying to protect a totally drug addled friend from inadvertently killing themselves knows that it would take a superhuman being to get through it without getting frustrated and even angry at times. I’ve done it, and it is maddening.
I can’t even imagine how horribly trapped and desperate those dispatchers must have felt in trying to help those poor (trapped and desperate!) drugged-out idiots. What a horror show.
We listened to those tapes in EMD training, as well as several others that made us all want to crawl into the tape player and beat the living shit out of the dispatchers. What kind of 911 center uses “Staying Alive” as hold music?
My thoughts exactly. Now, every now and then I’ll go on a bender and forget where I was the night before or where the car is. (I love taxis) And I don’t think a couple people getting stoned should die if they get lost on their way to a party in the country. (Which is what it sounds like and I’ve done it myself.) But to blame the dispatcher for being anything but a guardian angel down’t make sense to me.
These people answer phones for a living from people calling in with life and death emergencies (for the most part) and this woman is talking to a man and woman who are going to die if they’re not helped. She didn’t get enough info on whree they were to help, but it seems the OP wants to forget that little tidbit of added pressure on top of everything else.
To the OP, I understand what you’re saying and ranting about, but temper it with knowing this woman was doing everything she could to get the info as quickly as possible before both the people and the phone battery died. Few of us are under that much pressure doing our jobs.
I just busted up laughing after getting the mental image of someone in a life threatening emergency getting that as hold music. Yes, I’m evil for thinking it funny. 
I suppose I’m evil too, then. I almost died laughing.
I hadn’t heard of this story before tonight. I read the OP, then clicked the link and read the transcripts and heard the clips. Only after that did I read the story about what happened.
Reading the one ‘rude dispatcher call’ with the girlfriend, I knew right away, without any prior knowledge of the case, “Obviously, they’re fucked up on meth. No wonder she’s not being taken seriously.” Because, 9 times out of 10 (at least), you hear a call from someone that messed up and you figure it’s just someone who’s dialing while high. I can understand why 911 operators have no sympathy for that and would act rude.
It became clear that, after they realized it was almost certainly not a joke, the dispatchers and officers really cared about finding those kids, and gave it their all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the one dispatcher, Viberg, is haunted by it for the rest of her life.
There aren’t any evil people in this story. Those kids made one dumb mistake and paid a huge price for it. The first dispatchers made a mistake by (somewhat) dismissing the callers as pranksters. It’s just a sick, sad mess.
I spent a long time today reading through those transcripts and reading the articles and I just can’t figure this story out…
Admittedly I don’t know much about what a meth high is like, but I have never heard anything about it causing such crazy hallucinations. These people were saying stuff that was so far off the wall, I just can’t believe it. I mean, meth isn’t a hallucinogen, it’s a stimulant. I could totally see them coming up with that crazy stuff if they were on acid or mushrooms, but how the heck were they seeing a crowd of non-English-speaking people putting cars into trees? Or dozens of people with dogs who they called out to who would not help them because they did not speak English? And how the hell could they possibly think they were in the parking lot of their apartment complex surrounded by cars in trees and Mexicans and African Americans when they were really in the middle of nowhere, by a pond, in the snow? Or how could they think they were at that specific intersection, or just a short way up the highway when they were in the MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE? How on earth could they be seeing such vivid and crazy hallucinations on meth??
Reading those transcripts was just unbelieveably chilling, and leaves so many unanswered questions. It still isn’t clear at all what the heck they were doing out there. Has this ever been figured out? Were they really looking for a party out in the country, in the middle of a snow storm? Because they said several times that the guy’s truck was stolen, and they went looking for it. Was there any truth to that? It’s frustrating because the news articles don’t seem to even attempt to answer these questions.
This whole story really has chilled me! It just seems like there is more too it than has been discovered… like, the guy was adamant that he wasn’t on drugs and didn’t do drugs… maybe somehow they didn’t realize what they had taken…
Is anyone as confused as I am? 
Nyctea, those same questions are driving me nuts. It seems that all of the news organizations sort of gave up on exploring those questions after they died. There are a million things that don’t sit quite right - why were they so convinced that they were at their apartment complex? Throughout the entire 4 hours or so, both of them continually insist that they’re either at or right down the street from their apartment complex. Why did they think this when they were so far away?
Meth is a stimulant, agreed; I’ve never heard of anyone hallucinating while on it. Even stranger is that everyone - their families, even their closest friends - maintain that they would be the last people to use such drugs, that it would be entirely out of character. Still, with the type of filthy bathtub crystal meth that circulates in the midwest, who knows what else could have been in it?
I imagine that the shock from exposure to the cold may have had something to do with the disorientation. When they initially kept maintaining that their truck was upside down, I thought that they had been in an accident, and then the combination of injury/trauma, shock, and cold was causing the confusion. But when the police finally found where they were, the truck seemed perfectly fine.
If Requiem for a Dream is to be believed, amphetamines can lead to hallucinations after a lot of chronic use.
Seriously, no offense intended here (and not trying to say any of the following people are guilty or not), but Scott Peterson’s in-laws thought he was the last person in the world who would’ve killed his wife and unborn child. Ditto O.J. Simpson. Michael Jackson’s friends and family can’t comprehend that he would molest a child. Martha Stewart’s friends and family don’t think she did anyting wrong. The suspected BTK killer’s friends and family can’t imagine him being a serial killer. People thought Jeffrey Dahmer was a loser … but a serial killer? No way!
I’m just sayin’ - if you asked my mom and dad if they thought I’d ever used drugs, you’re damn right the answer would be “no.” Same goes for most of my friends. That’s all.
IIRC, it was revealed during the Primetime special that this couple had attended a NYE party where meth was being used. I think a reasonable assumption is that they’d been awake for at least 5 days prior to the night of this incident. Mild hallucinations from meth aren’t completely unheard of anyway and adding sleep deprivation only exacerbates that. It’s also possible, IMO, that they didn’t “see” all (or any) of it; they might have been feeding off of the paranoid rantings of each other, creating a completely verbal unreality. Sort of a, “Did you hear that? Shh!” thing. Mike was even taking ideas from the dispatcher at one point. When she was trying to get him to trace his steps to figure out why he wound up in this place, he said he was following people (the Mexicans? the African Americans? the non-English speaking people standing on the pond?) and she suggested he was trying to locate a party. Is it true? Who knows, but he agreed that’s what he was doing.
Regarding the shock of the families when they were informed of their children’s drug abuse, it’s not hard to hide your addictions especially when you’re not living at home. As far as the OP goes, I do think the dispatchers did the best they could with what they were given. The guy was freaked out on meth, freezing to death, and babbling incoherently while his equally freaked out girlfriend was shrieking in the backround. Considering the unbelieveable description of events, the series of nonanswers and information that contradicts all the previous information (“we’re outside, but we’re in a toll booth”, etc.), the arguing, and the refusal to comply with the dispatcher’s requests (e.g. giving simple yes or no answers), I would say they did quite well.
What a horribly sad, unimaginable situation, for all of them.
It sure beats “Another One Bites the Dust.”
On a serious note, you have to actually play music on hold because stressed out people could easily interpret silence as meaning you’ve hung up on them.
Yes. I did one line of crystal meth many, many years ago, and it kept me awake for THREE DAYS, with all the paranoia and anxiety that accompanies its use. It scared the crap out of me. I never did it again.
To answer nyctea scandiaca’s question, hypothermia can cause bizarre behavior, irritability, confusion, slowed or slurred speech, altered vision and uncoordinated movements. I’m not sure hallucinations are a symptom of hypothermia, but combined with the meth use, it certainly contributed.
Actually this website says hypothermia can cause hallucinations.
Yup, one of the first symptoms is disorientation and saying and doing strange things. That’s why when you’re hiking, you always buddy up, and keep an eye on your buddy, whom you’re supposed to know well enough to know what kinds of things they’d say and do.
FTR, it doesn’t have to be freezing or snowing for hypothermia to be a danger either, a person can become hypothermic in damp and chilly weather, even as warm as 50 degrees.
So with very little clothing and that cold, it’s not suprising that they were talking nonsense that early on, drugs or no drugs. Freezing, in the late stages, is said to make the victim feel as if they are too hot, so it’s not unusual to find victims who’ve apparently removed their clothing as well.
Sleep deprivation can cause hallucinations. I did drugs like a fiend during a few parts of the 80’s and the most convincing halucinations I ever had were from staying up 3 nights. More vivid than LSD, Psyllocybin, PCP. Meth is a stimulant. It keeps you awake. sleep deprivation = hallucinations, disorientation, confusion.
That’s what I get for posting at work…Damn customers calling me!!
I saw Primetime and didn’t think the operator sounded rude. The aprents of the kids that died never said anything about the operators being rude either, unless I missed it.