The family of a woman murdered by her husband in 2012 is suing the city of Denver claiming that she would still be alive today had police not taken 70 minutes to respond to two 911 calls placed by a neighbor.
Loretta Barela was murdered by her husband, Christopher Perea, on Nov. 18, 2012. While Perea was attacking her, Barela briefly escaped and ran to a neighbor’s house and began banging on the door. Court records show that the neighbor called 911 at 1:56 a.m., Denver’s 7News reported.
After no response from police, the neighbor called 911 again at 2:45 a.m. and was told by a dispatcher, “We haven’t forgotten about you, we’ve just been extremely busy tonight.”
David Roth, the attorney for Barela’s family says that records show that the only calls into police at that time were a robbery call and two traffic accidents, 7News reported. Roth also claims that dispatchers re-set a timer on the 911 calls, thus de-prioritizing them.
Records show that police officers weren’t dispatched to the call until 3:03 a.m. But by the time they arrived at Barela’s house she could not be found. After walking around the house the officers left the scene.
Perea called police five hours later, saying “I think I killed her.”
The family points to evidence that suggests that Barela was still alive when police were first called and when they first arrived at the scene.
A coroner determined that Barela’s time of death was between 4 and 6 a.m.
Barela’s family claims that she was denied equal protection under the law and that she would still be alive if police had showed up on time. A lawsuit filed Friday names four 911 dispatchers and two police officers for failing to handle the case properly.
“If they would have responded the first time, my mom could have been alive,” Barela’s son, Ray Rosa, told 7News days after the murder.
“It took a substantial amount of time just to have police dispatched to the scene and then very little to no investigation was done once they got there,” Roth told 7News. “The result was that it gave Perea ample time to beat and strangle his wife to death.”
Perea was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to multiple life sentences.
The 911 dispatcher ultimately resigned, and the city tried to paint the case as an isolated incident.
But Roth disagrees with that assessment and pointed to two other cases in which 911 callers were ultimately murdered before police arrived.
In one April 2014 case a woman was murdered by her husband while she was on the phone with 911. And in April 2012 a Sudanese immigrant called Denver police to report a road rage incident. According to Roth, police told the man to drive back to Denver to report it. When he did so he was shot to death.
“This is clearly a systemic problem and really the City and County of Denver needs to do something about it,” Roth told 7News. “Trying to continually hold these out as isolated incidents, that’s sad and irritating.”
An audit report released last year also indicates problems with the city’s handling of 911 calls. The audit found that between 2008 and 2013 the average 911 response time for the highest priority calls increased from 11.4 minutes to 14.3 minutes. Response times for lower priority calls increased from an average of 20.5 minutes to 23.3 minutes.