The husband of an Oregon woman fatally shot a year ago by the father of their granddaughter has sued the agency that manages countywide emergency dispatching services over alleged errors that delayed police response to his home.
The lawsuit, which also names three employees and the killer as defendants, was filed in Lucas County Common Pleas Court on Thursday, one day before the anniversary of Johanna Crawford’s Dec. 16, 2021, death at the hands of Malcolm D. Fisher.
The wrongful-death claim contends that the fatal shooting would never have occurred had 911 call-takers responded in accordance with agency procedures to a phone call they received that evening from Stevenson Hicks, Fisher’s cousin, warning that Fisher was headed to the home of Ms. Crawford and Knute Huber in the 3100 block of Hazelton Drive in Oregon.
And Andrew R. Mayle, the Perrysburg lawyer representing Mr. Huber, said the shooting was a predictable consequence of Lucas County municipalities’ having consolidated local emergency dispatching into the countywide 911 center last year in a cost-cutting move.
While Oregon police had been alerted the day before to a threat Fisher had made against the couple and had logged both their address and phone number, the 911 call-takers lacked that information and were confounded by Mr. Hicks’ inability to provide a correct address for the place he believed Fisher was going.
A local dispatcher would likely have had information on hand about the threat, Mr. Mayle said, and might have called the home to provide a warning as well as sending officers to the two-block, dead-end street.
“The 911 system is not where you should be cutting costs,” Mr. Mayle said Friday afternoon. “Many predicted there would be a tragedy like this, and this nightmare unfortunately happened to Mr. Huber and his family.”
Mr. Hicks gave a house number that does not exist and became agitated when the county 911 staff told him to wait on hold while they tried to verify the location before sending police.
While the dispatch center’s procedures call for call-takers to override their system’s demand for a precise address in the case of a dire emergency, that was not done in this case.
Instead, the lawsuit states, a dispatcher supervisor tried — after Mr. Hicks called back and gave the right house number but the wrong street — to telephone Fisher, ostensibly in hope of cajoling him to abort his attack. That wasted precious time that could have been used to call Oregon police, the lawsuit contends.
Oregon police only went to the house after Ms. Crawford dialed 911 upon Fisher’s entry. She was shot before the call was answered, but an officer patrolling nearby overheard reference to a 911 hangup at that address and responded, according to the lawsuit. By the time the officer got there, Fisher and Adeline, 9, were gone, but she was later found unharmed and he was arrested.
The lawsuit demands damages exceeding $25,000 from the Lucas County 911 Regional Council of Governments, its call-takers Terra Boudreaux and Noelle Trumbull, supervisor Tori Baertschi, and Fisher, along with 10 “John Doe” defendants. Also demanded are punitive damages, reimbursement of court costs and legal fees, and other appropriate compensation.
Fisher, 32, was sentenced in June to 55 years to life in prison after entering an Alford plea to murder, kidnapping, and several other felonies in connection with the death of Ms. Crawford, who was 66.
The lawsuit states Ms. Crawford and Mr. Huber had been awarded custody of Ms. Crawford’s granddaughter because their daughter Elizabeth and Fisher “were unable to fittingly care for and raise Adeline” and specifies Fisher’s custody claim was denied because he “was frequently in legal troubles and could not offer Adeline a stable lifestyle.” Fisher’s prior record included several felony convictions.
A Lucas County 911 internal investigation report included as a lawsuit exhibit described the confusion over the incident location as having “provided difficulty for both the call-taker and the supervisor involved.”
“While the location verification is necessary to provide accurate information to emergency responders, Policies and Procedures have been established in the event CAD [computer-assisted dispatching] verification is not possible given the information available at the time of the 911 call,” the investigation report said in its findings. “In this case, when efforts failed to establish a verified location for the incident, either the call-taker or the supervisor should have forced an override into the CAD system.
“While this does not ensure a faster response time since a precise location is not known, a general broadcast to the appropriate first responders may assist them in establishing a potential location or locations,” it concluded. “As information in this report indicates, an override was not initiated, which may have resulted in a delayed response time.”
Stacey Mitchell, the executive director of the Lucas County 911 Regional Council of Governments, did not respond to a message seeking comment about the lawsuit on Saturday.
First Published December 17, 2022, 10:12 p.m.
