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(CNN) - Tim TenEyck, an emergency telephone operator in Oregon, Ohio, has answered many 911 calls in his 14 years at work. When he received a call the night of November 13 to order a pizza, he thought someone had dialed the wrong number. But he soon realized that the woman on the phone was asking for help in this suburb east of Toledo.
TenEyck, 54, answered the call of a woman who wanted to order a pizza from her address. TenEyck replied: "Did you call 911 to order a pizza?"
The woman insisted and gave her apartment number. TenEyck said it was a wrong number to order a pizza, but the woman said, "No, you're not getting it." That made him understand that there was something more serious.
Simon Ray Lopez, 56, was arrested on November 13 by police in Oregon, Ohio, on domestic violence charges.
Through an interrogation, TenEyck, he realized that it was an incident of alleged domestic violence.
"This code is not a code that automatically means something," TenEyck said.
While he asked her yes or no questions, she replied: “Yes. I need a big pizza ”and“ No. With pepperoni. " After that, he asked if he could stay on the phone, but she refused. When he sent the police, he made sure that they understood that it was a supposed situation of domestic violence.
"Turn off the sirens before you get there," TenEyck said in the police notification call. “The caller ordered a pizza and agreed with everything I said. There is domestic violence. ”
According to the Oregon Police Department, a 38-year-old woman called 911 when her mother's boyfriend, Simon Ray Lopez, arrived home intoxicated. He allegedly hit the mother of the person who made the call, 57, on the arm, and pushed her around the house while shouting that he was going to hurt her.
Lopez, 56, was arrested on a charge of "domestic violence to cause or attempt to cause physical harm to a family member or household member," according to the police report. Lopez was also charged with a “no show” charge, according to the report. A lawyer for Lopez could not be immediately identified.
TenEyck said he had never received a call using coded language like this before. But he was sure that the woman was not intoxicated, and his insistence on saying that he called the right number indicated that he needed help.
TenEyck noted that, since they are a small telephone center, he was able to handle the call from beginning to end and accurately explain to the police the seriousness of the situation.
"The 911 operators handle these calls and don't get recognition for their work," TenEyck said. "Someone else could have abandoned this call, but this is nothing that no other dispatcher in the United States could not have handled."
Domestic violence
