The alleged ransomware attack against the City of Dallas reportedly delayed response times for emergency vehicles, with some emergency calls going unanswered.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, the City’s chief information officer, Bill Zielinski, delivered an update on the City’s recovery from last week’s alleged ransomware attack to the City Council Public Safety Committee on Monday.
However, Zielinski said the information he could share with the public was limited as he could not disclose details that could undermine the ongoing criminal investigation into the attack.
Zielinski said public safety operations have been prioritized during the City’s efforts to return its systems to normal.
However, when the alleged ransomware attack was still fresh, one of the reported consequences was severely delayed response times for emergency vehicles.
Local UPS employee Lane Dobbins told CBS News that last Thursday, the day after the alleged ransomware attack, he was taking the trash out to an alley behind his place of employment when he encountered a Dallas police officer trying to help a man in need of medical assistance.
“He was as blue as our shirt and not breathing and the cop was doing CPR,” Dobbins said to CBS News.
Dobbins said he, as a former nursing student, began alternating with the officer in administering CPR.
Dobbins said the officer told him that he already called for further assistance, but “the Dallas response system was offline and they were working on pen and paper.”
He explained that they waited for an ambulance for roughly 20 minutes, but no emergency vehicles ever came. Dobbins and the officer then drove the man to the hospital themselves in the officer’s police vehicle.
“Even when we were pulling out there was no ambulance, no sirens or anything,” he said, per CBS News.
The Dallas Police Department (DPD) confirmed to CBS News that a marked patrol car transported a man to a hospital 19 minutes after an off-duty police officer requested EMS.
As covered by The Dallas Express, the alleged ransomware attack against the City of Dallas was launched by a group called “Royal.”
At the beginning of this week, DPD’s website and other public-facing City service pages came back online.
The Dallas Express reached out to DPD for further information on how the alleged ransomware attack has affected the department but received no response by press time.
