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911 Dispatcher: 'It Didn't Register As A Scream'

College Student Found Slain In April

Updated: 8:00 am CST December 12, 2008

The dispatcher accused of mishandling a 911 call from a slain college student's cell phone said she doesn't know why she didn't hear a scream on the call.

VIDEO: Watch The Report | TALKBACK: What Do You Think?

"If I heard the initial 'scream,' it didn't register as a scream," dispatcher Rita Gahagan said during a personnel interview in April.

Gahagan also said background noise on the call that police have described as the sounds of a struggle "didn't register as anyone in obvious distress."

The county on Thursday released four pages documenting Gahagan's recollection of the call from Brittany Zimmermann's cell phone in response to an order by Dane County Circuit Court Judge Richard Niess.

Media outlets, including WISC-TV, had been seeking release of the document for months, as well as the release of Zimmermann's phone call to 911 sometime before her death

The county had kept portions of the report secret, citing personnel and disciplinary proceedings that were ongoing. County officials have said the dispatcher failed to call the line back after the call was disconnected or to send police.

In the internal interviews, Gahagan maintains she didn't hear anything to warrant action.

A month after the slaying, a union representative for Gahagan who listened to the 911 call also found nothing ominous on it.

"You can hear, like, movement. I did not hear whispers. I heard background noise but nothing that would make me suspect that it should be a call that should be responded to differently than what the dispatcher did," said Laurie Lane, AFSCME Local 720 union steward, a month after the killing.

The report also said the dispatcher had "an open line with (Zimmermann) the wireless caller for about one minute before the line was released," and that "she didn't know why she didn't call back the wireless caller other than she was moving on to other 911 calls waiting to be answered."

The report said that right after Zimmermann called, the dispatcher got another 911 hang up -- and called it back. But that wasn't an emergency; two men said they dialed 911 by mistake.

The report said Gahagan had a good work record with excellent skills. But the report did note that seven months before Zimmermann's homicide, the dispatcher was "coached" about a violation of the emergency call handling procedure, the same procedure at issue in the report.

Meanwhile, the former fiance of Zimmermann is now fighting the release of his call to 911 after he found her in her campus-area apartment last spring.

A Milwaukee law firm on Thursday asked a Dane County judge to temporarily suspend his order Wednesday that Dane County release Jordan Gonnering's 911 call, other unrelated 911 calls around that time.

A Dane County judge on Thursday temporarily stopped the release of Gonnering's 911 call until a lawyer for Gonnering had a chance to argue against its release at a hearing.

Gonnering, as well as the city and the Dane County district attorney, will argue against its release and the release of Zimmermann's 911 call on Dec. 19.

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