Posted on 12/01/2001 11:51:14 AM PST by Attila_the_Hun
Dispatcher ignored 911 call about kidnapping
A woman was abducted from a N.J. train station and killed. Police say the operator failed to act when a witness called.
By Dwight Ott and Maureen Graham INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
The night that Christine Lynn Eberle was abducted and murdered, Camden police dispatchers received a 911 call reporting an emergency and asking for help at the Ferry Avenue station of the PATCO High-Speed Line.
But the information was never relayed to officers on patrol, according to police, and within hours Eberle was dead.
Last night, a 20-year veteran dispatcher with the Camden police was suspended without pay for failing to pass on the caller's information.
The dispatcher, identified as Marie H. Cupparo, 69, of Camden, did not respond to a request for comment left on her answering machine, and no one answered the door at her home last night.
Police Chief Robert E. Allenbach said that he suspended Cupparo for "failing to take action on information supplied in a 911 call."
Eberle, 27, a Center City office worker, was on her way home to Washington Township when she was abducted about 8 p.m. on Nov. 12 in the 1,200-space parking lot. Her body was found the following night about three miles away in a wooded area.
Two Camden men are facing murder charges in the case.
According to investigators, the caller telephoned police from his car in the PATCO lot to say that he saw a woman struggling with two men. The caller, whom police would not identify, said a woman was screaming as she was being dragged into a car. The man followed the abductors' car through the parking lot and then lost sight of it, investigators said. All the while he was on the phone with police dispatch, they said.
The dispatcher dismissed the incident as a domestic dispute and never relayed the information to patrol officers, according to investigators.
Camden County Prosecutor Lee A. Solomon said his office was actively investigating the lapse.
"If anybody failed to take action or acted in any way to contribute to what happened to Christine Eberle, there will be hell to pay," Solomon said.
A transcript of the 911 tape was not available last night.
Allenbach said the Camden Police Department would release a full account of the incident next week.
"I assure that the Camden Police Department Internal Affairs Office and myself will investigate this matter to the fullest," Allenbach said.
This comes as Allenbach is fighting to keep his job as police chief. The city's mayor, Gwendolyn Faison, has refused to sign a new contract with him. But Allenbach has many supporters and allies, among them Solomon, who said he would investigate how the information was leaked and whether word about the 911 lapse was leaked to discredit the Police Department.
"If this was leaked for political purposes, or to gain a political advantage, it is reprehensible," Solomon said.
Eberle's mother, Linda Reis, said earlier yesterday that she had not been told of the 911 call.
Eberle was a financial manager at Delaware Investments in Center City and was engaged to be married in April.
When she did not come home from work that night, her fiance went looking for her. He found her 2002 Ford Explorer in the PATCO lot about 1 a.m., but it was not there when he returned about 5 a.m. That morning he filed a missing-person report with the Washington Township police.
Later that day, suspect Ryshaone H. Thomas, 23, of Camden, was spotted driving the Explorer and was arrested. That night, Eberle's beaten body was found in a wooded area in the Fairview section of Camden, not far from where Thomas lived with his grandmother. Police said she had died warding off a sexual assault.
The second suspect, Marcus D. Toliver, 22, was arrested Nov. 16. Both are being held in the Camden County Jail on $1 million bail.
The Newark Star-Ledger had one little paragraph on this sensational case. They are a schizo paper. On the one hand they like to publicize young white suburban teens who die in tragic circumstances and ignore black teens who die the same way. White lives seem to matter more there.
On the other hand they trumpet white on black crimes, looking for the racial motive. Black on white, or on asian, crime gets buried, downplayed, unanalyzed. There are one or two cases like this every year. Guess how many black women have been raped and murdered by white carjackers in the last ten years?
Mrs VS
Read, constrution kickbacks, payoffs, quality and material ripoff----all to hooked up political hacks and their "friends" with tax confiscated dollars.
It just a matter of time before people start saying that her mistake was to scream. In the minds of liberals, she should have fully cooperated and begged for her life.
"If anybody failed to take action or acted in any way to contribute to what happened to Christine Eberle, there will be hell to pay," Solomon said.
Yeah, right. The polticians in the sh*thole otherwise known as New Joisey have passed laws banning Americans there from defending themselves. Solomon should start his crusade by publicly criticizing them and campaigning for CCW laws in New Joisey.
Your title is not a logical conclusion!
This is so true, and I have even heard cops say it. All cops do is solve the crime afterwards, hopefully arresting the perp, etc. They cannot protect us.
A girl in my apartment building was being stalked by an obsessive ex-boyfriend. He somehow got in to our building, though it is a security building, and started screaming and banging on her door. She called 911. NOBODY EVER showed up. Fortunately the guy eventually gave up and went away, but he could have easily broken the window, gotten in, and killed her.
Of course, people like Rosie O'Donnell and Sharon Stone, who can afford bodyguards, security systems, etc., don't want us to be able to defend ourselves. It's really an outrage.
Not just the dispatcher, the politicians, retired or currently serving that voted for every single gun control law that affects law-abiding citizens of New Jersey.
I will make that bet and give 20 to 1 odds (what can I say I'm a frugal New Englander). Needless to say I get collect if the perps were black and the victim white.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
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