FORT WAYNE, Ind. — The Fort Wayne Police Department pulled a suicidal woman from the St. Marys River on Tuesday. They have technology to thank for helping to find her.
Fort Wayne-Allen County Dispatcher Michelle Pongratz told WANE TV that police used cell phone techology to find the woman.
The dispatchers find out the person’s cell phone provider and ask for the phone’s location, then the tech allows the dispatcher to get the latitude and longitude of where the phone is, so the they can tell emergency responders.
Pongratz told WANE TV they use the technology almost daily in life-or-death situations, and that seventy-five percent of the time it’s used in suicide threats.
So, when police learned there was a woman saying she was going to jump into the river on a Facebook Live, and she wasn’t where police thought she was they asked to have someone ping her phone’s location.
Who the woman is and if she’s okay is still unknown. She was taken away in an ambulance after being pulled from the water.
(Photo: m-gucci/Thinkstock)
