Courts stumped by woman who won’t stop calling 911, hotlines

A mentally troubled senior, whose repeated calls to 911 and crisis hotlines resulted in her being jailed three times over 16 months, is back in custody, accused of making more bogus emergency calls just days after her most recent release.

The 72-year-old woman was sentenced Nov. 21 to 90 days of time served and 18 months of probation after she admitted to making repeated “meritless” calls to 911 and crisis hotlines between April 17 and her arrest on Aug. 14.

The woman, who court heard has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder, was back in custody Nov. 29, charged with two counts of breaching a condition of her probation that she not call 911 or other emergency services unless there’s a real emergency.

In August 2024, the woman pleaded guilty to one count each of making harassing phone calls and sending false messages and was sentenced to two years of supervised probation.

Court was told the woman called 911 nearly 350 times and placed another 60 calls to Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Services between August 2022 and February 2023.

From mid-2022 to 2023, the woman went to hospital emergency rooms 137 times.

She placed numerous calls to suicide crisis lines, but would refuse services when emergency responders arrived at her home.

The constant calls have tied up emergency responders for hundreds of hours and cost the city several hundred thousand dollars in wasted resources, court was told at another sentencing hearing last February.

Lawyers and judges alike have struggled to come up with a strategy that will keep the woman out of jail and get her help.

“Candidly, I don’t know that there is a solution here.”

“Candidly, I don’t know that there is a solution here,” defence lawyer Julia Mann told provincial court Judge Sandy Chapman at the sentencing hearing last month.

“Jail is no place for a 72-year-old woman who had no criminal record until recently,” Mann said. “I have… utilized every possible resource and talked to every possible person I could, including her daughter, and we are all stumped here.”

Mann said the woman underwent a psychiatric assessment in the hopes she could be admitted into the mental health court program. The assessment concluded she had borderline personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and showed signs of dementia.

Mann said the woman was denied admission into the mental health court program because her personality disorder was considered a “behavioural issue,” not a mental illness.

At her most recent sentencing on Nov. 21, court heard the woman made three calls to crisis hotlines within a 24-hour period; she claimed she was either suicidal or had taken an overdose of pills, with each call resulting in police or paramedics arriving at her door.

After another emergency call that sent police and paramedics to her home, the woman pretended to be unresponsive. Paramedics had placed the woman on a stretcher and were preparing to take her to hospital when she sat up, raised a middle finger and refused to be transported.

“Though her mental health condition can make it difficult to appreciate the consequences of her actions in the moment, it appears when police attend and she is in custody she does appreciate the consequences.”

The woman’s borderline personality diagnosis “appears to be a very clear contributor to this behaviour,” Crown attorney Aiyana McKenzie told Chapmen. “However, it does present a problem, as borderline personality disorder is not considered to be treatable unless there is really significant co-operation from the patient.”

McKenzie said the woman appeared to have made some positive strides, noting after her sentencing hearing in February that it had been more than two months before she was alleged to have reoffended, “which really needs to be commended.”

“It seems like (she) is getting the message here, and though her mental health condition can make it difficult to appreciate the consequences of her actions in the moment, it appears when police attend and she is in custody she does appreciate the consequences,” McKenzie said.

The woman’s latest probation order included a condition she participate in counselling as ordered by her probation officer, a point made moot by her quick arrest.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca