Family upset after call to 911 about burglary is dropped - wave3.com-Louisville News, Weather & Sports

By Shayla Reaves - bio | email

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - A Floyd County family wants answers after a 911 call never made it to New Albany Police. WAVE 3's Shayla Reaves took their questions to police.

It is what happened at the home on June 4th that left the Conner family shaken. A man broke into their house while their daughter was home alone. She called 911, but no help came. So she called her parents, who were on their way to New York.

"She's hysterical. Says something about a man in the house with a gun, he's gonna kill me and then we lose our signal," Charles Conner told WAVE 3 News.

Conner didn't know that his daughter had already tried to call 911 just before 2 a.m.

"You can hear the victim ... on the phone, she was screaming," said Colonel Mike Lawrence with the New Albany Police Department.

WAVE 3 was told the screaming was so loud the dispatcher could hear it before even putting the phone to their ear, but that didn't last.

"When the communication worker picked up the phone, it was a dead line," said Lawrence."They didn't know anything that was going on, they handled it as a 911 hang up."

Lawrence says the dispatcher called the number back immediately, but got no answer. The next step was to send an officer to check the scene, but police are not sure the information ever made it to the system.

"They entered it in there, that's where a failure took place," said Lawrence. "We believe the number was deleted and not accepted into the system."

It was only when Conner and his wife got involved did the call make it back to police. While onboard their New York bound bus, they called 911 and asked Pennsylvania dispatchers to contact the New Albany Police Department. The Conners say the dispatchers refused to call New Albany and instead gave the Conner's the police department's number to call themselves. It was a call both the Conner's and police say came almost 30 minutes after the first call to 911.

Police are calling this a mistake and they are looking at ways to improve their system so it won't happen again. According to their report, the burglar got away with $8,000 in jewelry, and police are asking anyone with information to contact the New Albany Police Department at 812-948-5300.