3 men charged in connection to the investigation into a 911 dispatcher who refused to send an ambulance to woman

By Jalen Beckford and Christina Maxouris, CNN

Officials in Greene County, Pennsylvania, filed charges against three men for allegedly concealing evidence that was subpoenaed in the investigation of a 911 dispatcher who allegedly refused to send emergency medical assistance to a woman who later died, according to police criminal complaints.

The three individuals — Gregory Clay Leathers, Richard Paul Policz, and Robert Jeffrey Rhodes — are all facing charges related to tampering with public records or information, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and obstruction, according to the complaints.

They are not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the woman’s death. CNN has reached out to the three for comment.

The three were all members of the management team at Greene County’s Emergency Management Agency and allegedly agreed or conspired to “knowingly and purposefully conceal, withhold, omit, obstruct, or pervert” policy memo binders that were subject to search warrants that investigators served two years ago, according to affidavits of probable cause.

Those warrants had specified the release of “current training policy for dispatchers; any and all directives for standard operating procedures currently in place,” according to the affidavits.

Earlier this month, a former 911 dispatcher told detectives of several “books of (standards operating procedures)” that were used by the management team to issue “policy memos” to the dispatchers, according to the affidavits.

The dispatchers were required to sign or initial the memos — which the former dispatcher described as “binders” — to signal they understood them, the affidavits show.

“She advised that these memos were related to the policies and procedures regarding Dispatcher training and the operation of the 911 Center. These statements were corroborated by several others claiming whistleblower status,” according to the affidavits.

Detectives obtained another search warrant this month for the binders and received a blue binder that contained items including “clearly operational instructions to the employees in the 911 Center building.”

By hiding the existence of additional policies and procedures, the three men “attempted to defraud or injure Leon Price and/or Diania Kronk by excluding potential evidence used to determine the culpability of criminal charges,’ the affidavit states.

Dispatcher Leon Price was recently charged with involuntary manslaughter among other charges in connection to the death of Diania Kronk. Kronk’s daughter, Kelly Titchenell, called 911 in July 2020 and when Price answered, Titchenell told him her 54-year-old mother needed to go to the hospital, according to a civil lawsuit filed by Titchenell in Pennsylvania’s Western District court.

Price allegedly told Titchenell that her mother might refuse to go with emergency personnel to the hospital, the complaint said. He instructed her that before an ambulance could be dispatched, she would need to call back from her mother’s house and confirm she wouldn’t refuse services, filings allege.

Kronk died the next day, Titchenell told CNN.

Price allegedly acted outside the scope of his training and against policy and procedure standards at the time of the incident, according to the recent affidavits of probable cause.

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