Dispatcher discusses 911 call in Hoffman Estates stabbings

Even though he hosted a "waking you up" morning show and served as music director in 1993 for the closed-circuit radio station when he was a student at Harper College, Paul Jenkins knew broadcasting wouldn't be his career.

"I never could get used to the sound of my voice," says Jenkins, now 36, and working in a different field.

So you can imagine his surprise.

"I was sitting there with my kid, watching the news, and there's my voice on the TV," Jenkins says.

Jenkins is the 911 dispatcher who handled the call from the horrific April 17 stabbing in Hoffman Estates that killed three members of the Engelhardt family, left another critically wounded and has dominated the news.

"It sounded scarier listening to it than taking it," Jenkins says of the anguished, rambling and chaotic 911 call. "When you're taking it, it's business. You fall back on your training."

Dispatchers receive four to six months of training, and Jenkins has been working for Northwest Central Dispatch System for four years, says Cindy Barbera-Brelle, executive director of the service that handles all the fire and police calls for 21 departments in 11 Northwest suburban communities.

"In many ways, it's just like work," Jenkins says of his high-pressure job. "You have coffee. We read e-mail. But the phone rings, and you're on."

On the morning of April 17, Jenkins' shift handling fire department calls from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. was 16 minutes from ending when a call came into the center in Arlington Heights. Jenkins just happened to hit the answer button before any of his colleagues.

"I need an ambulance, or two," the female caller began.

She was using a cell phone, so Jenkins had to verify the address.

"To that point it was a medical call," remembers Jenkins, who typed an ambulance request that popped up on one of the monitors at his work station.

"But you have to be on your toes and expect anything. You can't really assume anything," Jenkins says. "You can't really depend on tone and cadence. She sounded relatively calm."

That changed as Jenkins' questions led him to revelations about multiple victims and a stabbing.

"This isn't just a medical call now," says Jenkins, who did more than type in the update.

"There were occasions when I stood up and spoke directly to the police dispatcher: 'Hey this is a crime scene. It's bad,'" remembers Jenkins, who was sitting near the police department dispatcher.

"It is definitely a team effort," says Barbera-Brelle. A shift of at least 11 dispatchers and a supervisor or two share information that pops up instantly on their monitors and is streamed to police cars and fire trucks, but they also talk to one another, she says.

"I got a lot of support. You're never really on your own in that room," Jenkins says.

The focus is on the safety of the person making the 911 call, the others on the scene and the emergency personnel heading into the situation, he notes.

"I really wanted to know 'where's the knife?'" Jenkins says. "But I like to think I had enough information to keep my responders safe. I don't want to bring more victims to the scene."

Safety officials, village leaders and a family member of the victims said they were satisfied with the way Jenkins and others handled the call. The dispatcher won compliments from peers and safety officials who attended a debriefing on the case.

"Paul knows the questions to ask," Barbera-Brelle says.

While he handles more than 1,000 calls a year, "I can probably count on my fingers and toes the truly traumatic calls I've taken. Most of it is just routine," Jenkins says. "This is the first major crime call."

It was the last call of his work day.

"I turned around and was trying to talk about it. That was a bizarre call," Jenkins says. But a supervisor immediately asked him about a department code that needed to be entered into the report, and "you fall right back into work."

After his shift ended, he rode his motorcycle to his home in Woodstock and went straight to bed. His wife, Melissa, who sells children's shoes for a living, asked him later if he knew anything about the crime she had heard on the news.

"In this case, unfortunately, I knew a lot," he told her.

He didn't listen to the 911 recording until he heard his voice on the TV news while he was on the couch with the couple's 11-month-old son, Andrew.

Charged with protecting the safety of the people on the other end of every 911 call he receives, Jenkins still carries that attitude with him as he argues that grieving loved ones shouldn't be subjected to the public airing of the call. He knows firsthand that the call doesn't tell the whole story. Media outlets that air the call simply force loved ones to relive that painful moment, he says.

Hearing it on the news, Jenkins says he still can't get used to the sound of his voice, but he is confident "I did everything I could do on the call."

During that call, two people pass the phone between them and give only vague glimpses into what had happened. The man now charged with the murders mostly talked about an injury he had received.

"The facts we now know is not what I had in my head after that phone call. I had a very small picture," Jenkins says.

The big picture is something Jenkins works to forget.

"It's important in this line of work to not take it home," he says. "You get phone calls from a lot of people who have a lot of problems. You have to remember that the majority of people aren't like that."

He says he focuses on the simple joys of playing with his son, the sunshine or an exciting Bulls game.

"Obviously this all had an effect," Jenkins says of the shocking killings, "but it hasn't affected my job."

He went right back to work the next night, handling the routine calls of fender-benders, noise complaints, minor sports injuries or whatever comes his way.

"Every day is different," Jenkins says.

That's a lesson he learned when he began his dispatch career with a soon-to-be-defunct airline.

"I graduated from dispatch school on Sept. 8, 2001," Jenkins says, "and my first day on the job was Sept. 11."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Stories</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=290955">Dispatcher's letter to the Daily Herald <span class="date">[5/4/09]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>