MADISON, Wis. -- A three-day suspension has been handed down for a former Dane County emergency dispatcher for her handling of a 911 call made by a slain University of Wisconsin-Madison student sometime before she was killed.

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

Controversy over the call Brittany Zimmermann made on April 2 before she was killed in her apartment has lingered for months. The dispatcher, Rita Gahagan, has said she didn't hear a scream or sounds of a struggle on the call and didn't call the number back or send police to investigate.

Police weren't sent to the scene until about 40 minutes after the call, when her fiancé found Zimmermann dead and called 911.

Gahagan had asked to transfer out of the Dane County 911 Center before Zimmermann was killed. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk's chief of staff Topf Wells said Friday that Gahagan will be suspended without pay for three days in her current job as a county child support clerk, and Gahagan's immediate supervisor will decide when it will start.

The suspension issued by Dane County follows an internal investigation and months of review following the incident on April 2. Through an open records request, WISC-TV learned that the discipline was issued on Monday.

Search warrant documents recently revealed that slaying victim Brittany Zimmermann called 911 about the time she was attacked in her home and that there were sounds of screaming and a struggle on the minute-long call placed at about 12:20 p.m. on April 2. The call disconnected and county officials said the number should have been called back, but interim 911 Director Kathy Krusiec said Gahagan got busy and forgot, an "unintentional oversight."

In records obtained by WISC-TV, Krusiec wrote that she found "no evidence Gahagan heard but chose not to react to sounds possibly indicating an emergency."

She added, "Nor do I find evidence that Gahagan was attending to any other matter that would have limited her attention to this call. It's therefore my conclusion that the sounds heard in the recording were not as loud or as clear to Gahagan at the time of the actual call."

Krusiec went on to say that she does not believe the dispatcher's hearing ability or her equipment were contributing factors. Rather, she cited an environment that "multiple things are happening and a recording system with limited ability to recreate the overall situation experienced by the communicator."

Gahagan's local union officials said neither Gahagan nor they will comment on the matter.

Records also show that Gahagan had an exemplary work record but was cited for failure to follow proper procedure for two incidents in 2007.

One incident involved her radio dispatching of a serious fire reported to another dispatcher. In that call, Gahagan told fire units on the radio that it was a high-priority fire, but she failed to specify that someone was trapped, which is a protocol error.

In the other incident for which Gahagan was cited, she was written up for failure to properly verify an address, WISC-TV reported.

The Dane County executive on Friday issued a one-sentence statement calling the discipline for Gahagan "appropriate."

There are no publicly declared suspects in the Zimmermann case.