911 recordings reveal the final confusing hours (heartbreaking)

[Cass]

Very tragic story



~~~~~~~



Recordings of the lost couple's calls to 911 emergency dispatchers weave a heartbreaking trail through fear, delusion, agony, frustration and desperation.



The trail that ultimately failed to bring help to the two as they struggled to survive in the snow and the dark began in the first call, when Janelle Hornickel asserted that the two were near their central Omaha apartment. That was at 12:28 a.m. Jan. 5.



Over the next four hours, she and Michael Wamsley never gave up telling 911 dispatchers they were near the Mandalay Apartments, 75th Street and Poppleton Avenue, regardless of how illogical that was shown to be.



And dispatchers never could pin down the couple's precise location, despite promising threads of conversation that suggested Platte River sites maddeningly close to where Wamsley and Hornickel actually were.



A deputy acting on those prompts actually found footprints in the quarry near where their bodies were eventually found. But the officer was called off when the search focused elsewhere.



The couple cried for help in the calls. Dispatchers worked them for any shred of information - mostly pushing calmly for details, occasionally barking for clarity and sometimes making emotional appeals to keep the couple going.



The tapes reveal moments of lucidity, sandwiched between tales so incredible that they must have been hallucinations.



Wamsley gave clues that proved true. He saw a gravel pit. A sand pile. A crane. A window-wrapped shack containing a blue book.



He also reported seeing 200 people on a pond. He called out to them for help but told a dispatcher they wouldn't help because they didn't speak English.



And Hornickel told Douglas County 911 that she was above her apartment in the trees, "and there's a lot of Mexicans and African-Americans and they're all dressed up in like these cult outfits, and they're moving all the vehicles."



They were, she said, taking cars apart and putting the parts in trees.



In the end, the conversations, like a person lost in a blizzard, wandered only in circles, and led nowhere.



"Hi, um, I'm here to report, um, I feel very threatened . . . hello, hello, can you hear me?" Hornickel said in her first call to 911. "I'm at the Mandalay apartment complexes."



~~~~~



Read the rest here and also there are tapes of the 911 calls

[lady cop]

this is a horrifying and tragic story. sadly it also illustrates the dangers of illegal drug use. both people, who were confused and disoriented, hallucinating and unable to tell where they were located to 911 dispatch, were found to have methamphetamine (ice, speed) in their bodies. they froze to death in a blinding snowstorm, and help was close by. very sad. i blame the meth.

[Bill Sikes]

>>^..^ Very tragic story


These people had a mobile 'phone, why couldn't they have been located from that?

[capt_buzzard]

Bill Sikes wrote: These people had a mobile 'phone, why couldn't they have been located from that?
Good point Bill.

[valerie]

Bill Sikes wrote: These people had a mobile 'phone, why couldn't they have been located from that?


Cell phones use different towers, and the one theirs was hitting apparently

was far away from their location. It's not like gps, sadly.

What an awful death. And to think that if you have your cell phone with

you, you can get help.

[valerie]

tmbsgrl wrote: I thought no matter where you were they could track you. See i just learned something new!! As always here on the FG. Now can someone please fill me in on where this tragedy took place? I have no clue.. I will try to find something about it on the internet.. Hopefully that will help me..


Tmbsgirl, just click on the link in Cass's post... but beware, if you listen to

the phone calls, it's pretty sad...

:-1