Officials move to fire dispatcher accused of falling asleep on job

City officials have moved to fire a public works dispatcher after he allegedly fell asleep on the job, once when he was needed to send vehicles to a fatal accident, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino said yesterday.

Horace White, 55, a communication equipment dispatcher who has worked for the city since 1979, was placed yesterday on unpaid administrative leave, pending a termination hearing yesterday. He became the latest employee in the Public Works Department to face disciplinary action.

Last month, Menino suspended the city's public works director, Dennis Royer, for three weeks after city officials learned that one of Royer's top aides had been collecting a paycheck for five months while she was living in Venezuela.

White could not be reached for comment yesterday. The city suspended him for three days Friday because he admitted he had fallen asleep during his 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift on May 26, said Dorothy Joyce, Menino's spokeswoman.

White was sleeping between 2 a.m. and 3:55 a.m., she said, about the time emergency officials were trying to reach him because they needed him to dispatch equipment operators to a fatal motor vehicle accident in Charlestown. A street light had been knocked over during the accident, in which the driver was injured and the passenger was killed.

White, who became a dispatcher in April 2006, had already been caught sleeping on the job on March 3 and suspended for one day, Joyce said.

But she said officials moved to fire him after they learned he had allegedly doused the porch of a Dorchester home with gasoline and lit it on fire on June 4, while three young children were upstairs.

White pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on June 5 and has a pretrial conference scheduled for July 16, but Joyce said city officials believe there is enough evidence to fire him.

"We're acting as an employer, not as a court of law," she said. "His behavior was so egregious and incompatible with public employees that we're not going to wait until July 16. We're confident that we know from [the police reports] that we've received that he was not acting in a manner that was becoming of a city employee."

According to a police report about the fire, White said he had been drinking when he realized he was missing his $5,000 gold chain. He confronted a man at a house on Abbot Street and accused him of stealing the chain.

Just before 6 p.m., White walked to a gas station on Blue Hill Avenue, bought a can of gasoline, and returned to the house on Abbot Street, according to the report.

At that time, the man White had confronted was upstairs on the third floor cooking with his children, who are 2, 8, and 13. The man smelled the fumes of the gasoline, rushed downstairs, and stomped the fire out with his foot, as White allegedly tried to reignite it, the report stated.

When police arrived, according to the report, White told them: "Ya, I did it. When you do me, I do you."

Maria Cramer can be reached at mcramer@globe.com.