Police release 911 calls that preceded officer’s fatal crash

By Mary Manning

Friday, May 22, 2009 | 3:38 p.m.

Metro Police released today three 911 calls made by a 14-year-old girl who said her step-father was beating her, prompting Officer James Manor to respond and become involved in a fatal crash.

Manor was killed early on May 7 as he traveled east on Flamingo Road, reaching a speed of 109 mph without emergency lights or siren, before colliding with 45-year-old Calvin Darling, who was turning left onto Ravenwood Drive in his pickup truck.

The girl in the first domestic violence call told a dispatcher that her step-dad struck her and promised to do it again.

"He started beating me," the girl says. "He said if I called the cops, he'd beat my ass."

She said that the step-dad had left with her little sister to pick up her mother.

In the second call, the girl sounds hysterical: "He's going to hit me even more," she tells the dispatcher.

The girl said that she had locked the front door. Seconds later, a deep voice asks twice, "Who are you on the phone with?"

Each of the first two calls lasts about a minute and break off abruptly. Police said that the phone line was busy both times when a dispatcher tried to recall.

The third recall is answered by a woman and is the longest at 6 minutes, 37 seconds.

An adult woman explains that she is the girl's mother and that she just got out of a hospital. "My daughter has anger issues," the woman said, "very, very bad ones."

The girl, who can be heard crying in the background, has no black eye and a scrape on the arm, which she did to herself, the woman said.

The girl is bi-polar and has been thrown out of the woman's brother's home and her grandmother's home, the woman said.

The girl's dad is "in prison" and the woman divorced him, she told the dispatcher. The step-dad is not in the house, the woman said, responding "I don't know," when asked by the dispatcher if she knows where he is.

The step-dad and little sister had picked up the mother at a hospital then dropped the woman and 7-year-old girl at home. "I just got out of the hospital, for chrissake," she said.

"I want to get my daughter help," the mother said to the dispatcher. The mother had arranged an appointment at a local mental health clinic for the following Monday, she told the dispatcher.

The dispatcher kept the woman on the phone, as sirens wail in the background.

The woman described how the teenage girl had broken "everything in my bathroom" and destroyed other objects in the apartment.

"Nobody has beaten her," the mother said, explaining that the girl's eyeliner made her eyes black and that she had scraped her own arm.

The crash between Officer Manor, 28, and Darling, who was arrested for drunken driving until his blood alcohol results showed that he was under the legal limit, occurred at 12:49 a.m., police said.

No charges have been filed against Darling at this time.

"We will not be releasing any further information related to this call at this time, as we still have an ongoing internal investigation," a police statement said.

A second officer following in another patrol car has had his actions reviewed, police said today. "At this time there is nothing to substantiate the need for formal discipline," the police said.

Sheriff Doug Gillespie said Wednesday that a committee of executive staff members established to look into the police department's emergency response policy is underway.

All officers, including the second policeman following Manor, will be required to take any new training that emerges from the committee, Gillespie said.

The sheriff said he had already sent a memo to all officers about the incident. All Metro Police officers will be required to adhere to any new policy changes.