Police release 911 calls in library stabbing
Cops: Yao taken to mental hospital ‘many times’
Police have released 911 calls from horrified witnesses to the brutal stabbing at the Winchester Public Library yesterday along with dozens of reports filed since 2012 detailing their dealings with murder defendant Jeffrey Yao — including an account of him “fondling” a hunting knife and taking it into his younger brother’s room.
“This is the library, somebody is stabbing someone, please come, hurry. Hurry!” one caller pleads.
“He stabbed a woman in the back,” another tells police. “She’s lying down on her back, oh my God there’s a lot of blood.”
Yao, 23, has pleaded not guilty to stabbing Deane Kenny Stryker to death on Feb. 24. Yao’s lawyer, J.W. Carney Jr., has said Yao’s mental illness was a factor in the attack. Winchester police Chief Peter MacDonnell said he hoped the reports prompt more discussion of mental health.
“We are releasing this information because it is in the public interest and because we believe that the public is served by the release of this information,” MacDonnell said in a statement. “Our officers brought this individual to a local hospital for mental health evaluations many times. It is my hope that the release of this information will contribute to the dialogue on mental health in our society.”
Neighbors and other critics have questioned whether police did enough to remove Yao as a threat. The documents lay out a long history of police responses to his behavior and concerns about his mental state:
• February 2012: Yao reportedly posts the manifesto of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho on his Facebook page. A mental health professional tells police Yao is not a threat and should be allowed to go to school.
• January 2013: Police investigate reports Yao was following a fifth-grade girl. An administrator at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute tells them Yao was asked to leave the school the previous fall for antisocial behavior, saying Yao was “walking the edge” and needed more than a psychological assessment. Yao was ultimately taken to Winchester Hospital in March 2013 for an evaluation and released.
• November 2013: Yao’s father calls police after waking up to see Yao in the hall, “fondling” a 6-inch knife. The younger Yao then put the blade in his waistband, pulled the hood from his sweatshirt over his head and went into his younger brother’s room, closing the door and staying there for a minute before returning to his room.
Yao’s father waited an hour until his son went downstairs before checking on the younger brother, who slept through the incident. Yao’s father tells police it was impossible to communicate with Jeffrey and confronting him would be useless.
• September 2017, Yao tries to break into a neighbor’s home, slamming his body against a glass door and trying to smash it with a flower pot. Yao was taken to the hospital for an evaluation, but released on his own recognizance.