An elderly Manhattan couple whose car became stuck near their wooded Catskills vacation home died after nine fruitless attempts to make a cellphone call for help and after the woman searched in vain for a neighbor.
State police and family members say 88-year-old Arthur Morris slid their car down an embankment 60 feet from their vacation home on May 3 in Andes, 115 miles northwest of Manhattan. Family members told the New York Daily News that Morris tried to get out but became wedged between the tilted car and the ground and was asphyxiated.
His wife, 89-year-old Madeleine, walked to a neighbor’s empty house and died of exposure after a rainy night under a tarp.
Cell service is spotty in the rural area.
Two years ago, then-Congressman Scott Murphy sent a public appeal to cell phone carriers to cover Delaware County, but it never happened.
Arthur, a Juilliard-educated music teacher, had heart disease and a hernia. His wife, a retired professor who survived the Nazi occupation in France, had two knee replacements but was mentally sharp.
Madeleine had been honored as a Christian who helped Jews escape the Nazis in France when she was just 17.
(Source: Record Online)
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6 Responses
Fix the problem New York State.
This is horrible! With the summer coming now, we should make sure that legislation approves cell towers so one can make an emergency call!
Open the casinos, there’ll be plenty of cell service. Plenty of other garbage too.
Sad story.
@zionflag: this is probably more of a phone issue than a state issue. The economics of covering hilly, less populated areas argues against the phone companies investing heavily with little chance of good return on investment.
@Shlomo2: If you build it, they will call.
While this is a truly sad story, the State has little do with this, and the free market economics of getting 100% coverage of rural areas don’t work out. Wireless carriers have gotten far better at covering the rural areas, but with hills and the like it’s going to be quite a while before there is better coverage. Ironically, things the community is by and large against (such as casinos) will increase the population and lead to greater carrier infrastructure investment.