Domestic Violence Victim Pretended to Order Pizza During 911 Call. It Worked

Dispatchers do not always understand such a message.

A woman caught in a domestic violence situation managed to call 911 by pretending to order pizza. The BBC reports.

Officers in the city of Oregon, Ohio, praised the girl's resourcefulness, and the alleged attacker was arrested. The woman said that her mother was the one who was attacked.

This tactic for covertly calling emergency services has long been known online, but this is a rare confirmed case of its effectiveness. Officials had previously warned that help is not guaranteed in such a case, since dispatchers are not trained to recognize a pizza order as a genuine call for help.

The dispatcher who answered the call initially thought the woman had dialed the wrong number. When she insisted that she had reached the right number, he realized what was happening. He said he had seen a similar scenario online but had never encountered it in practice. He is also convinced that other dispatchers would not have understood what was going on.

Call transcript

Dispatcher: Oregon 911

Girl: I would like to order a pizza at the address ***

D: You called 911 to order a pizza?

G: Well, yes. Apartment ***

D: This is the wrong number for ordering a pizza

G: No, no, no. You don't understand

D: Now I understand you.

Later in the call, the woman found ways to answer the operator's yes-or-no questions about how much danger she and her mother were in and what help they needed.

D: Is the other guy still there?

G: Yes, I need a large pizza.

D: Okay. What about medical help, do you need medical assistance?

G: No. With pepperoni.

It is not known for certain where the idea of the "pizza order" came from, but a very similar scenario was used in a campaign by the Norwegian Women's Public Health Association's shelters in 2010. 

In May 2014, a Reddit user who claimed to be a 911 operator described a domestic violence victim who called to order a pizza. They wrote that the call "started out pretty silly but turned out to be quite serious."