Emergency call placement methods and apparatus for a user equipment in a wireless network are disclosed. The placement method includes detecting initiation of an emergency call during a non-idle connection mode of the user equipment (204), terminating the non-idle connection mode (206) and initiating a new connection for the emergency call (208). This method allows the new connection to use a location methodology to locate the user equipment in response to the emergency call. The disclosed wireless user equipment (102, 500) is configured to implement the disclosed method.