911 cellphone calls don’t go through, couple perish

ANDES — An elderly Manhattan couple whose car got stuck near their Catskills vacation home died after nine attempts to make a cellphone call for help, and after the woman searched in vain for a neighbor.

A car driven by Arthur Morris, 88, slid down an embankment 60 feet from their vacation home May 3 in Andes, Delaware County, according to state police and relatives.

Family members said Friday that Morris tried to get out but became wedged between the tilted car and the ground and was asphyxiated.

His wife, Madeleine, 89, walked with her cane to an neighbor’s empty house. She died of exposure after a rainy night sheltering under a tarp on the patio. Her family didn’t know if she had also tried walking home.

“She walked a quarter mile to the neighbor’s house and there was no one there,” Madeleine’s grandson Jeantet Fields told the New York Daily News.

Cell service is spotty in the rural area, and calls they made to 911, Madeleine’s son and a neighbor did not go through.

Hunters found the husband’s body the next day, and searchers soon after found the wife’s body on the patio, police said.

Fields said the family agreed to share the story of the deaths out of concern for others who might be put at risk by gaps in cellphone coverage.