The effectiveness of the 911 emergency service has been called into question after a disorientated woman, wandering the lanes of the Guadalajara periferico (beltway) in the middle of the night, was struck and killed by a car, local daily NTR reported this week.
Two females in a passing car noticed the woman, who was barefoot and covered in excrement, alone on the city beltway near the Tren Ligero station to the north of the metropolitan area. They stopped and managed to get her to the central divider, where they tried to persuade her to return to the side of the road with them.
According to the newspaper, one of the women called 911 at 2:58 a.m. to ask for medical assistance. The operator promised to send a patrol car. As they waited, the two Good Samaritans tried to calm the distressed women, named by NTR as “Rosenda,” offering her a soda and cigarette, telling her that help would arrive soon. They also held on to her to make sure she didn’t wander back onto the road. Unfortunately, at 3:33 a.m. the anxious Rosenda broke free from their grasp and ran back onto the highway. The two women returned their car and drove back to the other side of the highway to search for her. Tragically, they found Rosenda a few minutes later lying in the middle of the road at the entrance to a tunnel. She had been run over and was dead. The vehicle that hit her was nowhere to be seen.
A police patrol car eventually showed up at 4:15 a.m. – over an hour after the original call. NTR also revealed that a report was filed with Zapopan police at 1:53 a.m. regarding a women seen walking on the periferico.
The newspaper story said Rosenda was from Fresnillo, Zacatecas and was living in a facility for vulnerable people in that town. She had apparently “escaped” and somehow made her way 357 kilometers to the Guadalajara beltway where she died.