A truth-challenged Ohio woman pleaded guilty this month to calling 911 hundreds of times over fake emergencies for the thrill of getting countless ambulance rides, prosecutors said.
Kesha Kennedy placed a massive strain on emergency services in the city of Zanesville, diverting critical resources away from people in actual need, with the bogus calls dating back to 2020, the Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office said.
In one case, the South Zanesville Fire Department was unable to respond to a call involving a person who couldn’t breathe — and who later died — because they were occupied transporting the 34-year-old fabulist, the prosecutor’s office said.
Kennedy called 911 nearly 400 times, sometimes several times a day, and would complain about various illnesses.
The prosecutor’s office said she effectively used “first responders for her personal entertainment for ambulance rides to the hospital,” but once she was there, doctors gave her a clean bill of health.
Each transport and visit was footed by taxpayer dollars through Medicaid.
A forensic psychologist who evaluated Kennedy said she demonstrated “a factitious disorder, which means that she’s a liar,” Muskingum County Assistant Prosecutor John Litle said in court.
She pleaded guilty on July 12 to charges of disrupting public services, false alarms, both felonies, and another 25 misdemeanor counts of misuse of 911 systems.
Kennedy’s bizarre behavior has been on display in at least four other counties in Ohio, including in Licking County where she pleaded guilty to misusing the 911 system in 2023, prosecutors said.
In one preposterous case, officers responded to a report at Licking Memorial Hospital with Kennedy where she pretended she was unable to stand or walk, prosecutors said.
When she was finally helped to a bench, she faked being unconscious, and then when she woke up she claimed she didn’t understand the rights that were being read to her because she was disabled, the prosecutor’s office said.
Doctors at the hospital quickly threw cold water on her outrageous assertion.
Litle, the assistant prosecutor, said officials need to set up a better system of tracking fake 911 calls as he decried the shocking conduct.
“Obviously some type of check or balance needs to exist, so that this type of abuse is more quickly reported by EMS to law enforcement because 350 pointless ambulance runs is absolutely ridiculous,” Litle said.
Kennedy will be sentenced at a later date.
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