Father of teen who suffocated in minivan listens to “difficult” 911 calls

CINCINNATI — The father of 16-year-old boy Kyle Plush, who died after being trapped in a minivan, says he will keep pushing for changes and wants more answers about a failed response to his son’s calls for help. Ron Plush told Cincinnati officials he listened to Kyle’s two 911 calls before coming to a City Council committee hearing Tuesday morning. He called doing so “very difficult.” 

City officials offered answers to 33 questions he had posed after police presented results of their investigation earlier this month. Plush responded with more questions, such as why there wasn’t more urgency by police and call center workers to the April 10 calls.

He wants answers by the next committee meeting June 11, saying it’s imperative to make sure such a tragedy won’t happen again.

Plush was apparently reaching for his tennis gear in the back of his minivan when he became helplessly pinned in the fold-away third-row seat. He knew he was in serious trouble. Using the voice-activated feature on his cellphone, he had Siri dial 911 and warned: “I’m going to die here.” He called again minutes later, this time describing his vehicle: a gold Honda Odyssey. 

Two police officers drove around at the boy’s high school looking for him but left after 11 minutes, one of them reporting dubiously: “I don’t see nobody … which I don’t imagine I would.”

Ron Plush found his son’s body inside the 2004 Honda Odyssey in a parking lot nearly six hours after Kyle’s first 911 call on April 10. A coroner says the teen died of asphyxiation from his chest being compressed. It is suspected that the foldaway rear seat flipped over. 

On Tuesday, Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman expressed the city’s “deepest condolences” to Kyle Plush’s family as he opened a committee hearing to follow up the police department’s May 14 presentation of results of their internal investigation..