An Ohio woman accused of lying pleaded guilty this month to calling 911 hundreds of times about fake emergencies in an attempt to get the thrill of multiple ambulance rides, prosecutors said.
Kesha Kennedy’s fake calls, dating back to 2020, placed a huge strain on Zanesville’s emergency services and took critical resources away from people who really needed help, the Muskingum County Prosecutor’s Office said.
In one case, the South Zanesville Fire Department was so busy transporting a 34-year-old fiction writer that it failed to respond to a call about a person who couldn’t breathe and later died, prosecutors said.
Kennedy called 911 nearly 400 times, sometimes several times a day, complaining of a variety of ailments.
Prosecutors said she was effectively “using the paramedics for their personal entertainment during the ambulance journey to the hospital”, but that once there a doctor gave her a clean bill of health.
Each trip and visit was paid for with taxpayer money through Medicaid.
A forensic psychologist who evaluated Kennedy said she exhibited symptoms of “factitious disorder, or lying,” Muskingum County Deputy Prosecutor John Little said in court.
She pleaded guilty on July 12 to felony charges of obstruction of public service and false alarm, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts of misuse of the 911 system.
Prosecutors said Kennedy’s bizarre behavior has also emerged in at least four other Ohio counties, including Licking County, where he pleaded guilty in 2023 to tampering with the 911 system.
In one extraordinary incident, prosecutors said, officers responded to a call about Kennedy at Licking Memorial Hospital and pretended that she was unable to stand or walk.
When she was finally seated on a bench, she pretended to lose consciousness and, when she woke up, claimed she was disabled and could not understand her rights as they were read to her, according to prosecutors.
Doctors at the hospital quickly denied her outrageous claims.
Deputy Attorney General Little condemned the shocking act and said authorities need to develop a better system for tracking fake 911 calls.
“Obviously there needs to be some checks and balances so this type of abuse is reported by EMS to police sooner, because 350 pointless ambulance dispatches is just ridiculous,” Little said.
Kennedy’s sentence is scheduled to be handed down at a later date.
