College student dies of flu before 911 rescuers can find him

Estimated read time: Less than a minute

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

TROY, N.Y. (AP) — A college student was found dead in his home of the flu after a garbled 911 call left rescuers with no means of locating him, authorities said.

Police and firefighters in Troy, New York, spent 45 minutes on Feb. 10 searching the City Station apartment complex where Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate student Yeming Shen lived and left without finding him. Nearly six hours later, his roommate arrived to find him dead from the flu.

An autopsy determined the student had influenza A, officials said.

Emergency dispatch systems struggle to deliver the precise location of cellphone users a quarter-century after the devices became commonplace, the Times Union reports.

The system was able to provide a general location of Sixth Avenue, which included two five-story apartment buildings.

Five officers, three firefighters and a police dog searched the common areas on each floor but only had his cellphone number to go on and could not locate his apartment, authorities said.