ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — An internal report states that two Orange County Sheriff's Office dispatchers are no longer employed with the county as a result of how they handled the 911 calls in the killing of three homeless victims.
The three victims, Deborah Watson, Todd Lemme and Richard Button, were shot and killed inside a shed next to a retention pond near Curry Ford Road in March.
A friend of the victims found them inside the barn, where they were known to stay, about 12 hours after they were shot and killed, authorities said.
The report states that Watson called 911 during the crime and the dispatcher who took that call, Tamela Moses, heard the gunshots.
Watson told the 911 operator the exact address, saying, "My friend just got shot. We're homeless. It's a camp. It's a barn, actually. Please hurry up."
None of the information, however, was relayed to deputies.
According to the report, Moses never even told responding deputies there was an active shooter.
The 14-year Sheriff's Office communications employee was fired after she told internal affairs investigators, "I was overtired. I was exhausted. I was tired. It was my last call."
Moses later blamed a medical condition for her mistakes and even admitted to letting her illness affect other calls.
Another dispatcher, Porscha Williams, resigned after WFTV found out a citizen also called 911 and instructed her to tell deputies to check the barn, which is where the victims were later found.
Audio: Porscha Williams' 911 call in homeless killings
"They may want to check in that barn back there on that empty property, and then there's a house in the back they may have been hiding in," the caller told Williams.
Because deputies on the scene didn't know how dangerous the situation was, when they came across David Emmons and Leonard Lewis, who was eventually arrested in the case, they told a supervisor, "It's got two transients in it. I have no doubt they were probably shooting off guns," and let the men go.
"This was a bad error, a big mistake," said Sheriff's Office spokesman Jeff Williamson. "The suspect was right there and fortunately we caught him later, but we could've had the suspect probably immediately."
Previous Story: 911 dispatcher heard triple murder; suspect's voice ID'd in call
WFTV
