October 10, 2009, WINTER SPRINGS — Winter Springs police say it appears a man accidentally shot and killed the woman he was to marry the next day.
Police Chief Kevin Brunelle said “right now everything points to a tragic accident,” but investigators were waiting for forensic results.
The entire 911 call follows the news video above.
I find things in the 911 call that is concerning. You may remember a post I did a while back about Extraneous Information in 911 calls. This is based on a well known study done by the FBI. This call contained extraneous information.
The FBI article starts, "A frantic young man called 911: "Get an ambulance to 168 Birch. My friend's been shot!" In another instance, the father of a 1-year-old boy reported, "Yes, ma'am ... my, my son can't breathe."
Do 911 homicide calls contain clues that could help investigators identify the killer? In these two examples, the first caller demanded immediate medical assistance for his friend and did not commit the crime. In the second instance, the father politely reported his child's condition, never asking for help for his son or expressing any urgency. He had shaken the boy, who later died.
Also in the FBI article, "when making genuine demands for medical assistance for critically injured victims, callers displayed voice modulation, rather than an even-paced, emotionless, and robotic tone. Yet, the absence of voice modulation was even more informative than its presence. Only 4 percent of innocent callers had no voice modulation, while 35 percent of guilty callers lacked voice modulation." We do not see voice modulation in this call.
Another thing we have to look at is how focused the caller is on the victim and getting the victim help. Which we do not see in this case.
You can hear the doorbell but you do not hear excitement at the prospect of help arriving. At that point the 911 call would quickly be forgotten as the caller would now focus his attention to the police officer and having him help the victim. Instead we only hear him say for the officer to come in without any urgency.
His emotion (crying) is not spontaneous. It would come and go as the realization of what has occurred sinks in, this would not happen in the lulls of the conversation or when the first responders first arrive, they would happen in the middle of the sentences based on the content of the sentences.
There is not excitement when she is breathing, which is very odd. It would be at this point we'd expect him to plead for the medical responders to hurry.
It is my hope the local police department investigators are aware of the FBI Enforcement Bulletin, June 2008 issue where this article, "911 Homicide Calls and Statement Analysis: is the caller the killer?" was published and was written by Susan H. Adams and Tracy Harpster.◦
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Man Shot and Killed Woman He was to Marry the Next Day
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1 comments:
His doorbell rings at 5:43 in that video. He pauses, stutters, and finishes his sentence on the phone "...get married this Saturday". 5:54 he cries out loud (I think either the officers were first noticed then or the officers got between him and his fiancee. If he wanted to appear more sad than he really was, a good time to cry would be when the officers walk in; however, that is also a time when the severity of the situation gains more weight which is good reason to cry. And given his on-and-off crying during the call I wouldn't hold this against him. I'm still a little lost at the lack of response to the doorbell. Maybe he didn't hear it? I'd consider that a flag.
Also, I do think he was relatively concise at the beginning of the call. If he had lost all hope for some reason (various factors might contribute to this, like clinical depression), I would think the call would sound something like this call (except for when he discovers she's breathing again, like you pointed out).
All-in-all, a very interesting phone call.
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