******Not for the Faint of Heart******
I will tell you about this next call where I felt like I had no control. As a dispatcher, that is the worst feeling in the world. When the call comes in, the caller and I are the only ones who know what is happening and what is about to happen. It’s a terrible secret until you drop the call on the screen. Then everyone knows. But for those 10 seconds or so, time stands still.
This call took place on Halloween. So along with the title, it sounds like it will be cliché. But I assure you, it’s not.
I started my shift this time around 20:00 (8 pm). I walked in, and it was beyond busy. I was expecting it to be busy, as I am sure everyone else was. But the calls we were getting immediately sounded like they were out of horror movies. Except they were genuine.
I ended up taking one of those calls.
Here it goes…
My 911 line rings, and I answer it to a man that sounds incredibly out of breath and in pain. I listened for anything happening in the background but couldn’t hear anything. I immediately asked him what the address was and what was going on. At first, he said nothing. It was an open line with silence and heavy breathing. I kept checking my screen to make sure the call didn’t disconnect, and it didn’t.
Finally, after about a minute of silence, he said, “I’ve been stabbed.”
I said, “Okay, sir, I need your address.”
He gave me his address but continued to sound out of breath. I got police, fire, and medical started toward the address. At this point, I started giving him medical direction.
I told him, “I need you to grab a clean, dry cloth and place it on the wound. I need you to hold pressure on it.”
He told me, “I can’t get up.”
After he told me that, I said, “Okay, well, I need you to do what you can and hold pressure to help stop the bleeding.”
He said, “Okay, let me find something.”
In the meantime, I asked, “Who did this to you? Where is this person?”
He said, “What?”
I repeated, “Who did this to you? Can you give me a description of the person?”
He said, “No, he’s gone. He’s gone.”
I asked, “Do you know him?”
He said, “No, never.”
The call was already bad, but now it was getting strange. The person wasn’t coherently answering my questions, and I noticed he was very calm after being stabbed. He was a little too calm for my liking.
I told him, “I’m going to say on the phone with you till the police get there. Keep holding pressure on the wound.”
He said, “You’re sending the police? I need medical.”
I said, “I’m sending both, but you were stabbed, and I have to send the police.”
Before he could say anything else, I heard knocking on the door in the background.
I told him, “That’s the police. Can you let them in?”
He said, “No, don’t come in. I just asked for medical.”
I could hear the door open in the background, and the police say, “Oh my god! Get medical up here right now!”
The line was still open, and the caller still had the phone. I could hear the police say, “Give me the phone!”
I heard, “Hey, dispatch, we're here. There are two victims here. The other one is eviscerated. Please tell EMS we need another ambulance emergent.”
At that moment, I went into a brief shock. Why would he not tell me that someone else was stabbed there? He said the person that did this was gone.
The caller I had on the phone ended up living, but his friend or ex-friend ended up dying.
Fast-forward about an hour, the person I was on the phone with stabbed his friend to death and then stabbed himself. He tried to make it look like a random stranger brutally attacked them.
Just to go a little further into detail, the caller I had on the phone stabbed his friend with the same knife he used to stab himself. That knife was found in the apartment. Nobody else touched that knife.
Furthermore, what is even more horrible about this call, is that I had no idea there was a second victim in the room. I was trying to give medical advice and help the killer instead of the victim. That is one detail I will never forget. I will never know if the second victim was alive while I was on the phone with his killer or if he died instantly. Either way, he received no help. That part haunts me.
This call was the third stabbing of the night on Halloween. Since this night, I have tried to get every Halloween off.
Thank you all for letting me share! I hope you're enjoying these articles! Like always, there will be more!
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Nat 🤍
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