By Bobby Kerlik, Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Original publication date: June 21, 2011

The Allegheny County 911 call-taker criticized for not relaying a gun warning to three police officers who were killed responding to a Stanton Heights call broke her silence on her actions on Monday.

Shannon Basa-Sabol testified as the first witness in the capital case against Richard Poplawski, 24.

She told the jury she took the initial call from Poplawski’s mother, Margaret Poplawski, asking for police to remove her son.

“The initial call was for a mother-son domestic,” Basa-Sabol testified. “There were no weapons involved, and he was not threatening her with any weapons.”

When Basa-Sabol relayed the call to the police dispatcher, she typed in “no weapons” because, she said, her training dictated that it was not necessary since no weapons were involved in the incident and no one was being threatened.

Basa-Sabol did ask if there were weapons in the home. Margaret Poplawski replied there were but that they were all legal and her son was not threatening her with any of them.

The dispatch is the subject of two pending lawsuits against the county — one from Margaret Poplawski and one from the estate of slain Officer Eric Kelly. Basa-Sabol’s failure to relay the information prompted a revamping of 911 call center procedures dictating how callers are questioned and what information the center provides to police.

In the days after the shootings, 911 officials apologized to police for not notifying responding officers about the guns.

Bob Full, then the county’s chief of emergency services, previously called her actions a “mistake” and “terrible omission.”

Basa-Sabol was a part-time worker at the time. County officials said she went through extensive retraining before becoming a full-time employee. 

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