DALLAS — About 40 minutes after leaving her grandmother's house last March, D'Lisa Kelley made an apparently accidental call to her sister.
"All she could hear was Lisa screaming," Kelley's grandmother, Marjurita Kelley, told a Dallas police 911 call-taker. "'Stop! Stop!' And somebody was hitting her and telling her — it was a male voice — telling her to 'Shut up! Shut up!' And we haven't heard from her since. She was pleading for her life. She said that was the kind of scream she heard."
The grandmother begged for help. "We don't know who has her, and so I don't know what to do," she told the 911 operator. "We can't get her on her cell phone. She's not responding to any messages. It's going straight to voicemail."
But Dallas police chose not to send help that night. Her family said the delay led to the young woman's death.
Newly-released police recordings — including the 911 call — don't answer the question of whether D'Lisa Kelley's life could have been saved. They do, however, shed new light on a police supervisor's decision not to send officers to investigate her disappearance.
"The family is very distraught," said Dominique Alexander, a family spokesman. "His whole demeanor was just disrespectful."
In the March 7 recording, Marjurita Kelley calls 911 and says that D'Lisa is missing, and also pregnant.
The call-taker tells her she's sending the police. Before doing so, the operator checks with her supervisor, police Sgt. Kevin Mansell.
"I had a question," the operator says to Mansell. "This lady, she doesn't really have a lot of information, but she's very, very concerned for her granddaughter."
She tells him about the call D'Lisa Kelley made to her sister. Mansell tells the operator to call back and get D'Lisa's cell phone number so that he can contact the phone company and have her phone pinged.
"Ok, I'll do that. I'll still send police for her, so that we can do a missing or something... or no?" the call-taker asks.
Mansell responds: "No, not yet … How old is this girl?"
"She's 24," the call-taker responds, saying that she's never previously gone missing before, and that she's also pregnant.
"Well sounds like she's [gone] missing before. That's how she got in that situation," Mansell says.
The operator called D'Lisa Kelley's grandmother to get the phone number.
In that portion of the recorded conversation, Marjurita Kelley is told that police are going to hold off on making a missing persons report while they check with the phone company. The operator then gave D'Lisa's number to Mansell.
Mansell contacted her cell provider. Kelley's cell was disconnected. He asked for her phone's last known coordinates. Mansell told internal affairs investigators that he never heard back from the provider, and then he forgot about it on that busy Friday night.
As a result, the call was given a designation for 911 calls that are "abandoned or hang-up calls," according to police records.
Alexander, a family spokesman, said the operator gave Mansell more than enough information to make the right decision.
"She wanted to send resources out to the grandmother's house. Why did he stop that process?" Alexander asked. "The process of pinging the phone and police officers being dispatched could have worked at the same time."
He said the family was outraged by Mansell's insinuations about Kelley's pregnancy.
"That's why the family has been asking for the Dallas department to remove him of his duties," Alexander said. "I believe the citizens of the City of Dallas will feel that is very disrespectful."
It wasn't until days later — after family members complained — that police began looking for D'Lisa Kelley.
On March 14, she was found murdered inside an abandoned house. An autopsy showed she had died several days after her disappearance.
Family members believe Sgt. Mansell's decision made the difference.
"D'Lisa would still be here today," Alexander said. "She would still be alive."
Mansell received a one-day suspension for failing to properly process a 911 emergency call sheet.
During his disciplinary hearing, Mansell apologized failing to follow up. He also said that particular call-taker asks lots of questions.
When asked what should have taken place, Mansell responded: "Definitely send the police to grandmother's house, because it seemed like it was the PR thing to do. [...] Would the results have been different? Probably not."
Kelley's family is pushing is for establishment of the Kelley Alert — similar to the Amber Alert — which would require police to immediately issue an bulletin in cases when it's reported that someone is in imminent danger.
