911 caller shocked by lack of response
28-year-old had just missed a deadly bullet; cops didn’t show up
CORAL SPRINGS — Guadalupe Herrera called for help when a bullet landed in her lap while driving through a gas station. The bullet missed her head, but shattered her back windshield and punctured the steering wheel.
Several 911 recordings of Herrera’s long wait for Coral Springs police were released Wednesday, revealing her frustration with dispatchers as they failed to send immediate help after she reported the shooting.
“They’re still not here and I just got shot at in the car,” said Herrera, 28, of Coral Springs, during her second call, 16 minutes later. “I don’t know what to do. … What if they shoot again? I’ve seen three police officers drive by and do nothing.”
Dispatchers had categorized the case as a suspicious incident instead of a shooting, not giving it the priority it needed, police said. As a result, more than a half-hour went by between when Herrera first called 911 and when it was dispatched to officers. A 911 supervisor also was playing a Netflix movie at work at the time, the department found.
“When we have someone, we’ll send them out,” the 911 operator told her during her second call. “Do you feel safe where you are?”
No, Herrera tells her, “I’m still in shock.” She was headed to a Chickfil-A and turned around when they were closed on a Sunday, passing through a Mobil gas station.
In her third call to Coral Springs 911, she tells them she was leaving the gas station to drive herself to the police station. “I don’t feel safe here at all.”
Police released the 911 calls from the June incident while discipline is still pending for Julie Vidaud, the shift supervisor, who missed other staff ’s errors.
Investigators pulled data from Vidaud’s computer over 30 days to find the most-used applications were Netflix, Hulu and Xfinity TV. They found that the movie “I Am Mother,” with actress Hilary Swank, played at her workstation for almost two hours while the 911 caller was reporting the shooting.
On June 9, the date of the shooting,
Vidaud’s computer also showed use of “numerous site clicks for websites related to shopping, news stories, streaming TV, movies, vacation planning, and fewer that could be considered work related,” according to an internal affairs investigation.
Vidaud told an investigator that movies play in the background but that doesn’t mean she was watching a flick for two hours. She said the supervisor’s console has five monitors.
Vidaud, whose discipline is pending, is expected to receive a two-day suspension without pay, police said. The investigation’s findings were inconclusive on what Vidaud was doing at the specific time of the incident. But she’ll be facing discipline for failing to supervise, police said.
Herrera told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Monday that the shooting was upsetting: “Nobody showed up — I had to drive myself to the agency.”
An agency spokeswoman said Vidaud would not be allowed to publicly comment on the case.
The original 911 calltaker was fired, and the second person who handled the call, a dispatcher, “was disciplined and has since been terminated,” police said, “in combination with other discipline” from other incidents.
Kirkland said the suspect in the shooting, Kyriakos Manolas, 33, of Coconut
Creek, has been charged with premeditated attempted murder. Police said his motive for the shooting is unclear.