'He was dying': Toronto family left on hold with 911 while trying to revive choking 1-year-old

A Toronto family said they were placed on hold when they called 911 to get emergency help for their one-year-old son who was choking on cereal.

Tim Ray told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday that his son, Asher, was eating cereal when he began to choke earlier this month.

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As Ray frantically tried to dislodge the food, he said his wife Lianne picked up the phone and called 911.

Ray said his baby was “asphyxiated for three minutes,” while Lianne was left waiting on the line for more than five minutes before giving up on the call and hanging up.

“In my head I’m like, 'This is getting very serious, very quick’, and I’m patting him really hard. I actually turned him upside down at one point to shake it out of him, and nothing was working,” Ray said,

Waiting for 911 to answer, the couple took Asher outside to try and get help. Ray said his son turned red, then purple and was foaming at the mouth.

“I remember sitting on the step holding the phone with 911 still not answering and looking over at Asher not breathing and just knowing that the window had been missed. It had been too long and we were alone and he was dying,” Lianne said. “I started screaming for help to the street desperate for just about anyone to help.”

Eventually, Ray said he was able to clear the cereal blocking his son’s airway, then breathed into his mouth a couple times before Asher regained consciousness and started breathing again.

“We were all shaking. I was shaking. Everyone was crying. Like the most uncontrollable sobbing.”

Still concerned because the baby was acting sleepy, they called 911 again. This time he said they were left waiting another five minutes, before being passed to paramedics and waiting an additional two minutes to speak with someone in an ambulance.

Tim Ray's son, Asher, is seen in this image. (Supplied)

“For me, it was so alarming because it defeats the purpose of having this service, if you can’t count on them to pick up when you call. It’s not their fault. I’m sure they’re getting inundated with calls for non-emergency type situations. It’s something we need to fix,” Ray said.

CTV News Toronto reached out to the Toronto Police Service and Toronto Paramedic Services to confirm the 911 call wait times.

In an email, Toronto police said the first and second 911 calls they received from the Rays were both answered after more than five minutes.

“Between 6:45 and 7:15 p.m., the longest wait time at the 911 call centre was 6 minutes and 10 seconds,” a TPS spokesperson said. “When a caller is in the priority queue and hangs up or is disconnected (for whatever reason), our 911 operators will call them back, as is our process. However, in this case, the phone was unregistered, so we could not initiate contact with the caller.”

The force went on to say that it is “in the process” of hiring 20 more 911 operators as TPS experiences what it described as an increase in wait times.

Toronto Paramedic Services told CTV News Toronto that the Ray's call was answered in under two minutes but could not provide a more precise time.

In the meantime, Ray said he expects an immediate response when calling 911.

“There’s an infinite number of examples you would want an immediate response from your emergency responders. I’m sure if they had known that there was a one-year-old on the other end of the line that was like choking and couldn’t breathe, they would have come right away. The problem is the inability to tell them that, [to] get through to them is the issue.”

2021 numbers presented at the Toronto Police Services Board meeting last summer revealed almost 14,000 callers waited between one and four minutes after dialing 911 depending on the time of day and in some cases people waited up to 11 minutes.

According to 911 service level standards, the goal is to answer 90 per cent of calls within 15 seconds.

Tim Ray and his son, Asher, are seen in this undated image.

“I think the message to the city is we need to staff up on our 911 responders, but the other message to all of us is don’t call 911 because you’re frustrated cause you can’t get a hold of your family doctor. Don’t call 911 cause you’re bored,” Ray said.

There is evidence, people on a regular basis call 911 for the wrong reasons.

Ray said more than a week later he and his wife are still struggling with the terrifying incident.

“I just have a really new perspective on how quickly things can change. Life is valuable. It’s one of those things he’ll bounce back from but it takes a while,” said Ray, holding back tears.