A Buffalo emergency services manager could be fired after he was accused by a supermarket employee of closing a call to 911 during a racist shooting at a store last week.
The dispatcher was released on administrative leave Monday after an internal investigation and faces a disciplinary hearing on May 30, at which “termination will be requested,” said Peter Anderson, a spokesman for the Erie County Executive.
The investigation was sparked by comments for The Buffalo News from Latisha Rodgers, an assistant office manager at the Tops supermarket, where a white gunman killed 10 blacks in one of the worst racist mass shootings in recent United States history.
The man accused of the murders, 18-year-old Peyton Hendron, is accused of traveling 200 miles from his home in Conklin, New York, specifically to kill black people, fueled by a racist belief in so-called substitution theory.
On Saturday, authorities said he opened fire in front of a supermarket, then went inside and continued firing on shoppers and workers before turning himself in to police. He pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges.
Ms Rodgers told The News that after calling 911 while trying to hide from the shooter, she whispered in hopes of continuing to avoid his attention. The dispatcher, she said, had warned her.
“She was yelling at me, saying, ‘Why are you whispering?’ You don’t have to whisper, “Ms. Rodgers told The News,” and I told her, “Ma’am, he’s still in the store. He fired. I am afraid for my life. I don’t want him to hear me. Can you send help? She got mad at me, shut me in the face.
Ms. Rodgers, 33, told The News that she then called her boyfriend and told him to call 911.
She offered a similar description of events in a separate interview with The New York Times, saying she was standing behind the store’s customer service counter when she first heard the shooting.
After bending down, she told The Times, she pulled out her cell phone, called 911 and whispered to the dispatcher that someone was shooting at the store. The dispatcher had asked why he was whispering, and then the connection was cut off, Ms. Rodgers said in an interview.
Mr Anderson, spokesman for Erie County Executive Director Mark Poloncarz, told Fox 5 New York that “the dispatcher’s action had nothing to do with sending the call”. At a news conference Sunday, Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph A. Gramagia said the first call to 911 was at 2:30 p.m. and that officers arrived at the store at 2:31 p.m.
Officials from the union representing the dispatcher, CSEA Local 815, could not be found immediately for comment.
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