Boy makes 230 hang-up cell phone calls to Warren County 911 center; girl makes 30

The Warren County Sheriff's Office is cautioning adults to be careful with old cell phones after two separate incidents in which a boy made 230 hang-up calls to the 911 center and a girl made 30 calls, both using cell phones.

According to the Sheriff's Office, a nine-year-old boy made over 230 hang-up calls to the county 911 center on two separate occasions using a non-contract cell phone.

One hundred and eighty-three of those calls were made over a two-day period between August 27th and August 28th. The other 54 calls were made between September 27th and September 30th.

Then on October 6th, a seven-year-old girl identifying herself as "Hannah Montana" placed 30 calls to the 911 center.

In one of those calls, the girl reported a house on fire in Granville. In another call, she reported a fight in progress.

Both children were using non-provisioned cell phones at the time, according to the Sheriff's Office, which are often old cell phones without an owner or phone number assigned to it but still connect to 911.

Those calls were classified as unresolved calls, meaning the communications operator is unable to re-establish contact or does not get a legitimate response from the person who answers the phone.

Unresolved hang-up calls automatically result in a police response, according to the Sheriff's Office, and while they typically don't dispatch fire or EMS units for those calls, they still take dispatchers away from true emergencies, the Office said.

"On both occasions, staff members spent a considerable amount of valuable time trying to obtain the caller's location through GPS technology, making multiple attempts to re-establish contact with the caller and trying to determine if in fact there was an emergency," said a statement from the Sheriff's Office.

"The lesson to be learned is simple," the statement continued. "If you have a cell phone that you no longer use, remove the battery before you give it to a child as a toy."