Tops Employee: 9-1-1 Hung Up on Me During Buffalo Shooting

The Buffalo News, N.Y.

As she lay on the floor, behind the customer service counter where she hid while a white supremacist was actively shooting inside the Tops supermarket, she dialed 9-1-1.

Latisha, an assistant office manager at the Jefferson Avenue store who wished to provide only her first name, whispered into the phone with the dispatcher, hoping to remain unnoticed by the shooter but wanting to alert police to the tragedy that was unfolding.

"She was yelling at me, saying, 'Why are you whispering? You don't have to whisper,'" Latisha said, "and I was telling her, 'Ma'am, he's still in the store. He's shooting. I'm scared for my life. I don't want him to hear me. Can you please send help?' She got mad at me, hung up in my face."

Latisha said she then called her boyfriend and told him to call 9-1-1.

"I felt that lady left me to die yesterday," Latisha told the Buffalo News on Sunday, as she waited for a worship service to start at True Bethel Baptist Church.

Peter Anderson, spokesman for Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, said "immediate action was taken" with the dispatcher.

He said an internal investigation began Sunday, with the dispatcher placed on administrative leave Monday, pending a disciplinary hearing May 30. Such a disciplinary hearing could result in an employee's termination or other action.

Ten people were killed and three others wounded in the mass shooting at Tops on May 14. Police have charged Payton Gendron, 18, of Conklin, with first-degree murder.

Central Police Services communications division employees staff the E9-1-1 Center at the Erie County Public Safety Campus located in Buffalo.

CSEA Local 815 Erie Unit, which represents the county's dispatchers, said it does typically not comment on disciplinary actions.

Per the workers' contract, an employee covered under the agreement "shall not be disciplined or discharged except for incompetency or misconduct while performing his/her duties." An employee also can seek review of the discipline or discharge by initiating an appeal, the agreement states.

As for whether the 9-1-1 call recording will be publicly released, that is unlikely.

New York County Law 308(4), which applies to counties outside of New York City, states that, "records, in whatever form they may be kept, of calls made to a municipality's E9-1-1 system shall not be made available to or obtained by any entity or person, other than that municipality's public safety agency, another government agency or body, or a private entity or a person providing medical, ambulance or other emergency services, and shall not be utilized for any commercial purpose other than the provision of emergency services."

Many other states, including Florida, Illinois and Maryland, allow for public inspection of 9-1-1 call recordings or transcripts.

Latisha made it out of the store alive but her co-worker Aaron Salter, a retired Buffalo police officer who worked as a security guard at Tops, did not.

Salter pulled out his weapon and confronted the shooter. Even though one of Salter's bullets struck the gunman, the shooter's armor plating protected him, allowing him to return Salter's fire and kill him.

"He just came to do his job," Latisha said of Salter.

Buffalo police did quickly respond to the scene, which Mayor Byron W. Brown and top law enforcement officials said saved a lot of lives.