Dispatcher Did All She Could in Triple Killing
By Jeb Phillips, The Columbus Dispatch
Original posting date: Wednesday, December 1, 2010 02:51 AM
Columbus, Ohio: Police officers can do only so much when an anonymous 911 call comes from a cell phone, as was the case with a woman who was found stabbed to death last week.
And Columbus police officials say that what officers and a police dispatcher did in trying to find Tia Hendricks was just what they were supposed to do.
The anonymous call, which lasted 17 seconds, was made early Thanksgiving Day. A woman screamed, cried and yelled “Caron!” She said the name again, then the call was disconnected.
The police dispatcher called back at least twice, according to police records. She used software provided through cell-phone companies to track the phone’s owner and the signal. The phone number was registered to Hendricks, but at her former address on S. Hague Avenue on the West Side.
The signal showed her call coming from the North Side near a duplex on Rosslyn Avenue – less than a block from the home where Hendricks and her two children were found dead the next day.
But even with police following proper procedure, there is no guarantee that they can find a cell-phone caller, said Lt. Brent Mull, who supervises operations for the police communications center.
The Federal Communications Commission requires cell-phone companies to provide information about 911 callers to public-safety agencies, including call-back numbers and the latitude and longitude of the callers. Coordinates have to be accurate to within 50 to 300 meters, which is about 55 to 328 yards.
That’s helpful to a point.
“Here’s our problem if we don’t get information from a caller,” Mull said. “We’re standing at Broad and High. (A caller) is on the 15th floor of a building. We don’t have a magic ball to tell where the caller is.”
Law-enforcement authorities are finding it tougher and tougher to find some 911 callers, as more homes switch from land lines to cell phones.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 25 percent of U.S. households in the second half of 2009 had only cell-phone service.
Mull said that 70 percent of 911 calls to Columbus police are now made on a cell phone.
After the call from Hendricks, police officers checked the area and found nothing. The dispatcher also alerted nearby Sharon Township police about the call.
“(The dispatcher) did a considerable number of things” to find the caller, said homicide detective Patricia Dailey.
Hendricks, 31; her daughter, Tahlia Hendricks, 10; and her son, Tyron Hendricks, 2, were found dead inside their apartment at 465 Broad Meadows Blvd.
Caron Montgomery, Hendricks’ live-in boyfriend and Tyron’s father, has been charged with their murders. Montgomery, 36, was found in the apartment with knife wounds that appeared to be self-inflicted, police said.
Some family members still live at the Hague Avenue home, but the dispatcher and officers did not check that address or notify the people there of the call.
Hendricks and her children were found after family members, including at least one who lives at the Hague address, and a friend became worried because she wasn’t returning calls and had missed Thanksgiving dinner and work. So the friend and family members went to the apartment on Friday.
“Hindsight is 20/20,” Mull said about checking the Hague address. But the priority is finding where the call is coming from and going there, he said.
“The call is coming from across town,” Mull said. “What the call-taker did is exactly what she should have done.”
Posted by permission of The Columbus Dispatch.
