Buy Photo Ron Plush, father of Kyle, addresses City Council's law and public safety committee regarding the response to the death of Seven Hills student Kyle Plush, Monday, May 14, 2018. (Photo: Kareem Elgazzar/The Enquirer)Buy Photo 
 
 The father of Seven Hills student Kyle Plush asked for an outside assessment of Cincinnati's emergency response system Monday following the release of an internal police investigation into his son's death. 
 
 Ron Plush said the police investigation leaves too many questions unanswered about the city's response to his 16-year-old son's 911 calls for help. Kyle was asphyxiated in his Honda Odyssey on April 10 after becoming pinned under a seat. 
 
 Plush's comments came amid a City Council presentation about the police investigation. 
 
 The police report found technical and personnel problems contributed to the unsuccessful emergency response to Kyle's two desperate 911 calls for help, but it ultimately concluded everyone involved followed proper procedures. 
 
 Both the Plush family and City Council members expressed frustration with the report, which came more than a month after Kyle's death. They said it failed to answer important questions about what happened that day. 
 
 "We need to understand all the things that went wrong so something like this doesn't happen again," Plush told council members. "If a member of your family called 911 today, would you feel what happened to Kyle could potentially happen to them?" 
 
 Several council members quizzed Police Chief Eliot Isaac and other police officials about the report's findings, but they came away unsatisfied with the responses. 
 
 "It's clear to me the report we have is incomplete," Mayor John Cranley said. "We need to get the answers." 
 
 "This is nowhere close to where we want to be," Councilman Greg Landsman said. "This raises more questions than were answered." 
 
 Later in the day Monday, Law and Public Safety Committee Chairman Christopher Smitherman circulated a motion and found unanimous support to direct the city administration to move forward on paying for an independent investigation into Plush's death. Plush said he and his family support an independent investigation. 
 
 The problems identified in the report included inadequate supervision at the emergency communications center and the apparent inability of the 911 operators to hear Kyle provide critical information about the seriousness of his situation, including a warning that he would die if he didn't get help quickly. 
 
 Ron Plush told council members he appreciates the city's efforts to get to the bottom of the incident, but he said the report released Monday doesn't go far enough. He said remaining questions about the city's emergency response system should be addressed through an independent assessment that would not be influenced by politics or personal relationships. 
 
 "It has to be clear that politics and interdepartmental conflicts and personal conflicts need to be put aside during this process," he said. "I personally will not stand for it, and I will be vocal. 
 
 "I owe that to Kyle, to the rest of my family and to the citizens of this community." 
 
 Isaac, who presented the police report to council Monday, defended the response by officers and 911 operators, saying they all are "heartbroken" over Kyle's death. The report found the officers and 911 operators acted appropriately. 
 
 But Isaac acknowledged there were problems with the emergency response. 
 
 "There are some failures and we have to do better," he said. "There's going to be a lot of opportunity for us to learn and for us to do better." 
 
 Key findings of the report: 
 
 • Kyle made his first 911 call at 3:14 p.m. by using his voice to activate the cell phone in his pocket. Kyle told operators he was trapped in his van at Seven Hills and he was "going to die here" if he didn't get help. 
 
 Kyle became stuck under the rear seat after it flipped when he leaned over to get some tennis equipment. 
 
 But police officials said Monday that the operator, Stephanie Magee, reported she didn't hear Kyle say his life was in danger, possibly because an automated message that greets all 911 callers talked over him. Kyle's voice sounded distant on the phone and he could not hear the operator, the report states. 
 
 The report says another operator listened to the call, however, while Magee tried to confirm the location. That operator heard Kyle say, "Help me I'm going to die. I'm in a van at Seven Hills (inaudible) shop." The other operator also told Magee to give officers the thrift store information. 
 
 Kyle's warning that he was going to die without help was not passed on to officers, police officials said. They concluded that Magee followed procedures. 
 
 • Two police officers, Edsel Osborne and Brian Brazile, were dispatched to Seven Hills after Kyle's first 911 call. They arrived at 3:26 p.m. and spent about 14 minutes driving through parking lots around the school, including the lot across the street where Kyle was trapped in his van. 
 
 The officers did not get out of their car to search. Isaac said they remained in their vehicle to cover more ground and because they did not have all the information they needed to conduct a search. 
 
 The officers thought they were looking for an elderly woman locked in her vehicle. And, they knew the caller said "help me" and reported being stuck inside a van in the Seven Hills parking lot, possibly in the thrift store's lot across the street from the school. 
 
 The report said the officers' performance "met department standards." 
 
 "Their actions were consistent with the actions that a reasonable officer would take," it said. 
 
 • The report confirmed a different 911 operator who took Kyle's second call for help at 3:35 p.m., said she couldn't hear him. The report did not explain why and said it was not known whether operator Amber Smith's headset worked properly. Her computer system froze and she had difficulty connecting to the system during the call. 
 
 The call was treated as a "silent call," one of about 100,000 silent or inaudible calls 911 operators in Cincinnati receive every year. In that call, the recording of which was later released to the public, Kyle again said he would die without help and gave more specific information, including the model and color of his Honda Odyssey van. 
 
 Police officials determined Smith also followed standard operating procedures. 
 
 • The city's Computer Aided Dispatch system, which allows 911 operators to communicate with officers at the scene, crashed on several occasions on the day Kyle died. Operators were using a backup system at a different location on April 10, which made it harder to hear incoming calls because of background noise, the report said. 
 
 The report does not, however, say that's why the second operator couldn't hear Kyle on the second call. 
 
 • The two police officers at the scene did not have a mapped location of Kyle's call on the computer in their vehicle because the city does not yet have the ability to provide them with that information. Isaac said he expects the city to have that technology in place this year. 
 
 Mayor John Cranley said the investigation shows the city failed in several ways to adequately respond to Kyle's calls for help, and he said Kyle's father was correct to say the report failed to answer several important questions. 
 
 "I think we failed," Cranley said. "In all cases, we can do better, we should do better and we must do better." 
 
 Smitherman said more work needs to be done if the city is serious about improving the emergency response system. 
 
 "Everyone should have been more aggressive," Smitherman said of the response to Kyle's 911 calls. "I am not satisfied." 
 
 City Council will meet again May 29 to discuss the report and to seek answers to some of their remaining questions. Both Cranley and Isaac said they would support hiring an outside investigator to review the emergency response. 
 
 Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that the Plush family says they didn't ask for an outside investigation into Kyle's death but rather a fresh set of eyes into the city's emergency response system. 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://cin.ci/2rJRCsy ||||| Cincinnati mayor: 'We failed' in case of teen dying in van 
 
 City Council calls for outside investigation into Kyle Plush case 
 
 The father of a 16-year-old Ohio boy who died despite calling 911 while trapped in a minivan asked authorities Monday why responding officers didn't get out of their cruiser to search, and whether exact GPS coordinates existed for his son's location. 
 
 Appearing at a Cincinnati City Council meeting on the response to his son's death, Ron Plush promised to help improve the city 911 system but also said he would be asking difficult questions along the way. 
 
 Plush found the body of his son, Kyle, on April 10 inside the 2004 Honda Odyssey in a parking lot near his school nearly six hours after the first 911 call was made. 
 
 A coroner says he died of asphyxiation from his chest being compressed. 
 
 It is suspected that the foldaway rear seat flipped over as he reached for tennis gear in the back. 
 
 "Kyle will give us the strength and guidance to get the job done," Ron Plush said. 
 
 Mayor John Cranley told Plush he would receive written responses to every question and called the police report on the case incomplete. 
 
 Cranley opened Monday's meeting by saying the city failed in its response to the 911 call. 
 
 "In all cases we can do better, we should do better, we must do better," Cranley said. 
 
 Cincinnati police chief Eliot Isaac presented the results of an internal investigation before the City Council's law and safety committee, providing details of the 911 call and the police response. 
 
 Among the information released Monday: 
 
 The city's computer assisted-dispatching system experienced difficulties throughout the call. 
 
 Kyle's phone was in his pocket as he called, and he was using "Siri" caller technology to call 911. Kyle was not able to give back and forth answers to a dispatcher, and the phone disconnected his call. 
 
 The automated 911 response overrode Kyle's initial comments, which weren't heard by the dispatcher. 
 
 Officers initially believed they were searching for an elderly woman locked in her vehicle needing help. 
 
 Officers weren't given information from the initial call 911 that someone was banging and screaming for help. 
 
 Isaac said officers determined they could search a bigger area and see more by staying in their cruiser. 
 
 The boy's aunt, also attending Monday's meeting, noted that Kyle Plush's voicemail included his name, and was not a generic message. 
 
 If authorities knew the name "Kyle" and that the call was from someone near a school, they had enough to do a proper search minutes after the call was received, said Jodi Schwind. 
 
 Council members also questioned why officers didn't just search all the vans in the parking lot that day. 
 
 "Kyle did everything he should have done, everything a mom, a dad, would tell their child to do, he did," said councilwoman Amy Murray. "And he was failed horribly." 
 
 Some new details were revealed in the report. 
 
 Investigators said Kyle Plush’s cellphone was in his pocket. That’s why he couldn’t hear or be heard clearly by 911 dispatchers. 
 
 The report also verified that dispatchers had the coordinates given by Kyle Plush’s cellphone. The coordinates were not used to try to determine where he was. 
 
 “If you put in those coordinates, where does it come up and why didn’t you do that?” council member Amy Murray asked investigators. 
 
 Investigators acknowledged that the coordinates came back to a location very close to where Kyle was found. 
 
 A WLWT test showed the coordinates dropped a pin within a matter of a few feet of where Kyle Plush was eventually found dead. 
 
 City Council voted unanimously Monday to bring in an outside investigative entity. 
 
 The Hamilton County sheriff's office, which also dispatched a deputy that day, is also investigating, as is the county Prosecutor's Office. 
 
 Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters said his office won't do anything until the outside investigation is complete. 
 
 Council members scheduled a meeting May 29 for police to provide answer to questions raised Monday.
– Kyle Plush managed to call 911 twice from the third-row seat of the van in which he had become trapped on April 10, using Siri to place two calls from the phone in his pocket. The 16-year-old suffocated in the parking lot of Cincinnati's Seven Hills School, and on Monday the City Council's Law and Public Safety Committee was presented with the findings of an investigation into the teen's death and discussed them publicly. Police Chief Eliot Isaac, his investigators, and technical staff were the ones sharing the findings, reports WLWT. The most looming question, per the Cincinnati Enquirer: "whether 911 operators and police officers responded appropriately to Kyle's two calls for help." The report concluded 911 operations and police did act appropriately, but the report cites technical and personnel failings that produced the failed response. "We failed to get the outcome we wanted in this emergency response," said Mayor John Cranley. The investigation found that the two officers who responded to the 911 calls erred in turning off their body cameras 3 minutes into their 14-minute search, reports Fox 19. Isaac said the officers drove through lots looking for Kyle over the course of those 14 minutes; that included the lot where he was trapped. They at no point exited their vehicle, a decision they said was made in order to cover the most ground and because the lots were crowded due to school just ending.