“The dispatcher comes on and I’m whispering to her and I said, ‘Miss, please send help to 1275 Jefferson there is a shooter in the store,’ ” Rogers told WGRZ. “She proceeded in a very nasty tone and says, ‘I can’t hear you, why are you whispering? You don’t have to whisper, they can’t hear you,’ so I continued to whisper and I said, ‘Ma’am he’s still in the store, he’s still shooting! I’m scared for my life, please send help!’ Out of nervousness, my phone fell out of my hand, she said something I couldn’t make out, and then the phone hung up.”
Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told reporters last month that the county’s intention was “to terminate the 911 call taker who acted totally inappropriately, not following protocol.” A county spokesman confirmed in a statement that a hearing took place Thursday, at which the dispatcher, whom the Buffalo News identified as Sheila E. Ayers, was terminated after eight years with Erie County’s Central Police Services Department.
“According to the Erie County Department of Personnel, the individual who was the subject of a disciplinary hearing earlier today is no longer employed as a police complaint writer for Erie County effective as of noon today,” the statement reads.
Ayers, 54, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post early Saturday.
Before the hearing, she told the News she was sorry for what Rogers experienced, while also claiming the Tops employee had changed her story about the 911 call “multiple times.” She asked the public to withhold judgment before more information was available.
“I’m being attacked for one side of the story,” Ayers said.
A spokesperson with CSEA Local 815, the union that represents the dispatcher, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post. Denise Szymura, president of the union, told the Buffalo News it would file a grievance regarding Ayers’s termination.
The announcement comes the same week that Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old charged in connection with the killing, was indicted on 25 counts, including domestic terrorism and murder as a hate crime. Authorities say the alleged white supremacist targeted the Tops supermarket in the largely Black neighborhood because of the hate he harbored for minorities, fueled by an obsession with conspiracy theories that proliferate on the Internet.
Gendron, who police say traveled three hours from his home in Conklin, N.Y., to target Black people with his Bushmaster XM-15 rifle, is believed to have posted a screed online that revealed a paranoid obsession with a racist conspiracy theory claiming White Americans are intentionally being replaced by non-White immigrants.
A grand jury considering the case against Gendron, who has pleaded not guilty, returned one count of domestic terrorism motivated by hate, 10 counts of first-degree murder as a hate crime, 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, three counts of attempted second-degree murder as a hate crime and one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
If convicted of domestic terrorism motivated by hate, Gendron would face an automatic sentence of life in prison without…
Read More: Buffalo shooting 911 dispatcher Sheila Ayers fired for allegedly hanging up on Tops employee
