DEJ-OUDOM
injuries to the back and left sides of her head from her husband punching her. NO ARREST
Columbus police did not arrest Jason Dej-Oudom during that call — the disposition was listed on that report as “Not a Crime/Other Service.”
Instead, police provided Phoukeo Dej-Oudom with a business card for the prosecutor’s office in Franklin County, Ohio, and a pamphlet called “A Guide to Protection Orders, The Court, and Community Resources.” FIVE HOURS LATER
It wouldn’t be the last time the system failed to protect the woman, who again called for help five hours later.
She told police that Jason Dej-Oudom called her cellphone several times and said, “Something was going to happen to her because she left,” the Columbus police report for that incident said.
A family friend called the man to try to calm him. Jason Dej-Oudom told the friend that if “he did not find out where (the) victim was, then (he) was going to kill somebody.”
It is unclear whether the man was arrested after that incident. The report said the case was cleared and referred to the prosecutor’s office.
Phoukeo and Jason Dej-Oudom married in Franklin County in 2000, county records show. She filed for divorce and primary custody of the children in Clark County Family Court on May 25.
Records indicate that no one showed up for a June 22 hearing on the custody motion, which was then dismissed.
Las Vegas police responded to a domestic violence incident at the family’s Torrey Pines condominium in June, but the department has refused to share details of that incident, citing an open investigation. Police dispatch logs show that officers responded to the complex seven other times in June, including a call about a family disturbance on June 21 — the night before the custody hearing.
Phoukeo Dej-Oudom also applied for temporary protection order against her husband a few weeks before her family was killed.
In the protection order application, Phoukeo Dej-Oudom indicated that her husband had threatened the family with weapons in the past.
“Throughout the marriage, the children’s lives as well as mine have been threatened. Guns have been pulled out and pointed to our heads multiple times,” she wrote.
The application was filed June 8. It was denied by domestic violence hearing master Amy Mastin the following day because it did “not meet statutory requirements,” according to court records.
According to a Clark County court statement about the denial, the woman’s application did not meet the requirements because many of the incidents she listed “referenced situations in Ohio many years ago between 2000 and 2007 involving the father and guns, but nothing that had recently occurred in Las Vegas.” Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Find @WesJuhl on Twitter.