The Hash Slinging Slasher

One of my more disturbing calls came in a few months ago. I was on the night shift, as would be anticipated with a call like this. Here's an edited journal entry I wrote after a few days after the event.

Sometimes, I wonder why I still subject myself to this kind of “torture”. Why am I still working this job? What is keeping me here? Maybe the pay. Not many places in town pay more than $8/hr., let alone finding a job that pays over $10/hr. But I don’t think that’s it, it’s gotta be more. Sitting in this dingy control room, with half of the florescent lights off because the other half of them would make it look like an operating room. With the hum of a million and one fans droning on at different speeds and pitches. The occasional stray radio click that doesn’t really mean anything except that maybe an officer has fallen asleep and is leaning his handheld against the inside of the patrol car door. Tonight was exciting, but not in a good way exciting. It was one of the first times I’ve actually had somebody on the other end of a 911 call actually just screaming for help. It's 3am, and that’s all I heard at first.

“Help! Help, Oh My God, Help, send help!”

Then, the line clicks and silence. I can’t put it in the notes fast enough before the same number calls back. This time the man is a bit more coherent, though still obviously shaken up and panicked. I can hear his wife in the background saying how she doesn’t want to hear “this”.

This? What is this? Him talking to me on 911? She wants to know if he is gone. He? Who he? "He” ended up being the next of kin to a couple living in a house many miles out of town. Their son, middle-aged, has some sort of mental illness.

The 911 line was acting squirrely. I could hear “them” perfectly fine, but my talking seemed garbled, almost “alien-like” in nature. I know how this sounds from hearing numerous call replays and hearing how bad the call quality is sometimes. I tried to get anything I could out of the man while he was still with me on the line; He breathing heavily, probably trying to decide whether to listen to his wife or myself, trying to decipher whether this was real life, or just a very bad dream. I wished it were the latter.

According to the information I gathered from the gentleman, his stepson tried to attack he and his wife. While they were sleeping. With an axe. And a sledge hammer. Yes, an axe and a sledge hammer. While trying not to have to go home and throw away a good pair of jeans, I got the sheriff on the line. I was frantic enough as it was, without remembering that their home was at least 20 miles out of town. I talked on the 911 call for around 9 minutes before I finally got frustrated hearing "What? I can’t understand you." After I made sure they were at least safe and their home was secure with no perp in sight, I called back on the non-emergency line.

The answer this time came from the man’s wife. Her voice was faint and distant, though I knew the phone handset was right at her ear. She started to weep. I tried to stay with her as long as I could and get whatever information she could recall immediately after having her life threatened by her own kin. God bless her. She seemed disoriented, lost, distant. Her voice cracked as she cried and all I could tell her was “Ma’am, I need you to stay with me, I’m here to help and we’re going to get somebody out there, okay?” She responded by saying something along the lines of “I know that...” Then she started crying again. This call was heartbreaking. But I had to keep myself together. After gathering whatever info I could, and making sure they locked their doors and stayed inside the house, I hung up the line and gave all the info to the sheriff.We made plans and got a first responder to check out the couple and make sure they were okay.

A few minutes later, another 911 call. Out of area cell phone number. Great, what now? “911, your emergency?” “Um yes, I was wondering if you had gotten a call about an altercation around an hour ago at a house outside of town? If you did, I was probably the other party involved in that..” Holy crap. I took the guy’s info, and asked him to stay on the line while I advised the sheriff what was going on. He said he would be en-route to the subject's location. He claimed he was at a grocery store where he was using the pay phone because he had forgotten his cell phone. Weird, huh? I told him somebody would be out to meet him shortly and to stay put.

After all was said and done, the call was cleared for the time being. The husband and wife were okay. Quite shaken up, but didn’t require immediate medical attention. The sheriff took the suspect down to the sheriff’s office for further questioning, and probably to see if this guy was even sane.

After all was said and done, did I really help anybody? Maybe. But maybe I was just the garbled voice on the other end of the telephone who couldn’t be understood worth a damn. Still, I have to tell myself I did something. I made plans quickly with the sheriff and together, we got things sorted out. Nobody died. Nobody died... I can only imagine waking up to somebody smashing things in your house, then looking around and suddenly staring death in the face. The scariest part of all of this is probably that at this point, death looks a lot like your son. And you don’t know whether to reason or fight back.

That call took so much out of me, but it wasn't until after the fact that I realized the magnitude of this call. It was a traumatic experience. But I made it. I didn't quit, I didn't hate my job, I didn't think twice about what I was doing. I made it. We are on the front lines of the Everyday Heroes of America. We get paid to keep going when the going gets tough.