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A 911 dispatcher has been fired after a Tops employee trapped inside the Buffalo supermarket during last month’s mass shooting that killed 10 people said he was hanged.
The Erie County dispatcher was fired last month after Latisha Rogers, deputy director of the Tops supermarket office, told Buffalo News and WGRZ that she called 911 and whispered to the dispatcher with hoping to inform the officer of the mass shooting. unfolding in the grocery store. But instead of helping herself at a time when “I was scared for my life,” Rogers said the 911 dispatcher fired her with “a very nasty tone.”
“The dispatcher arrives and I’m whispering to her, and I said, ‘Ma’am, please send help to 1275 Jefferson, there’s a shooter in the store,'” Rogers told WGRZ. and he said, “I can’t hear you, why are you whispering? You don’t have to whisper, they can’t hear you,” so I kept whispering and said, my life, please send help! ‘ Out of nervousness, the phone fell out of my hand, he said something I couldn’t understand, and then the phone hung up. “
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told reporters last month that the county’s intention was to “end the 911 call that acted in a totally inappropriate manner, without following protocol.” A county spokesman confirmed in a statement that a hearing was held on Thursday, in which the dispatcher, whom Buffalo News identified as Sheila E. Ayers, was fired after eight years with the Department of Police Services. Erie County Central.
“According to the Erie County Personnel Department, the person who was the subject of a disciplinary hearing today is no longer employed as a police report writer for Erie County as of noon today,” he says. the statement.
Ayers, 54, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post early Saturday morning.
Before the hearing, he told News that he regretted what Rogers was going through, while claiming that the Tops employee had changed his story about the 911 call “multiple times.” He asked the public to hold the trial before more information was available.
“I’m attacking for a face of history,” Ayers said.
A spokesman for CSEA Local 815, the union representing the dispatcher, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post. Denise Szymura, president of the union, told Buffalo News she would file a complaint regarding Ayers’ dismissal.
The announcement comes the same week that Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old accused in connection with the murder, was charged with 25 counts, including domestic terrorism and murder as a hate crime. Authorities say the alleged white supremacist went to the Tops supermarket in the mostly black neighborhood because of his hatred of minorities, fueled by an obsession with conspiracy theories proliferating on the Internet.
Gendron, who is said to have traveled three hours from his home in Conklin, New York, to target blacks with his Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, is believed to have published an online script revealing a paranoid obsession with a racist conspiracy theory that states that white Americans are. intentionally replaced by non-white immigrants.
A grand jury considering the case against Gendron, who pleaded not guilty, returned a charge of domestic terrorism motivated by hatred, 10 counts of first-degree murder as a hate crime, 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, three counts of attempted second-degree homicide as a hate crime, and a second-degree criminal possession count of a weapon.
Buffalo shooting suspect charged with murder as hate crime, domestic terrorism
If convicted of hate-motivated domestic terrorism, Gendron would face an automatic life sentence without parole.
As the United States recovers from a recent series of mass shootings from New York to Texas to Oklahoma, President Biden has called on Congress to take immediate action on arms control. . In a speech on Thursday, the president called for radical changes to the country’s gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons and a ban on high-capacity magazines, following recent attacks on Buffalo, a primary school. in Uvalde, Texas, and a hospital in Tulsa. . The equally divided Senate political dynamic makes the odds of such proposals remote.
“I respect the culture and tradition and the concerns of legal gun owners,” he said. “At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute.”
Speaking on June 2 about the recent mass shootings, President Biden said that “this time we have to do something” and that the second amendment “is not absolute”. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post)
There have been more than 200 mass shootings in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a research group. Mass shootings, where four or more people, not including the shooter, are injured or killed, have averaged more than one a day so far this year. Not a week has passed since 2022 without at least four mass shootings.
Rogers was standing behind the store’s customer service desk on May 14 when the shooting began. As he grabbed to avoid the shots, he called 911 around 2:30 p.m.
“He got mad at me, hung me in the face,” Rogers said of the dispatcher in an interview with The News. Rogers told local media that he later called his boyfriend and asked him to call 911.
Following the news of Rogers, county officials began investigating his allegations about the dispatcher. Poloncarz, the county executive, told reporters in May that Erie County emergency services found the call in question after reviewing 911 calls associated with the mass shooting. They found the dispatcher’s alleged actions “completely unacceptable,” Poloncarz said.
New York State law suggests that the recording of a 911 call is still unlikely to be published. New York County Law 308 (4) of New York City states that “records, in any form maintained, of calls made to a municipality’s E911 system will not be made available or obtained by any entity or person other than the agency. public safety of this municipality, another government agency or agency, or a private entity or person providing medical services, ambulances or other emergency services, and shall not be used for any commercial purpose other than is the provision of emergency services ”.
Rogers told WGRZ last month that he was initially on the fence because the dispatcher was losing his job, but had concluded that being on administrative leave was not enough.
“She didn’t understand anything, she didn’t care and left me for dead,” Rogers said. “I just thank God I’m here, because I could have died.”
Shayna Jacobs and David Nakamura contributed to this report.