A frustrated caller tried desperately to give her location, but two Mount Vernon police dispatchers had trouble pinpointing the victim while telling the caller they were on the way.
Mount Vernon – A man was on trial which revealed frantic moments as 911 dispatchers tried to save a 58-year-old woman who was being attacked which ultimately caused her to suffer from a fractured rib, and head trauma and her eyes were swollen shut.
The 911 call begins with a woman trying to tell a dispatcher where she is located — an issue that continues through much of the call. According to the report, it was on June 21, 2017, a former Mount Vernon resident was en route to an alcohol treatment center for a meeting. While on her way, she ran into Thomas Jessamy, a convicted felon whom she had gone to school with years earlier. After getting acquainted, she agreed to go with him to his house. They arrived and around 5:30 pm that’s when all hell broke loose. Jessamy demanded she take off her clothes, he started to get physical and abusive and demanded she perform oral sex on him.
Someone how, about an hour later, the woman managed to get to a bathroom inside Jessamy’s house and call 911. At this time she’s thinking she may have a chance at saving herself from the abuse she had already experienced and or being killed. But unfortunately for her, things only got worse. According to Lohud, the bathroom was located at the back of the apartment and the next street over is The Bronx (NYC). So when she dialed 911 instead of the call going to a NY State dispatcher, the call bounced off a cell tower in the Bronx and was answered by an NYPD dispatcher.
Keep in mind, if she had made this call from a landline phone the call would have been answered by Mount Vernon police, and the Enhanced 911 system would have given them her exact location. Unfortunately, the woman only had access to her cell phone.
Once the NYPD dispatcher realized the already battered woman was calling from a Mount Vernon address, the call was transferred to the Mount Vernon Police. Per a NYPD spokesman, caller information was manually given to MVPD by the NYPD dispatcher. During the call she spoke in a low voice, to conceal her phone conversation with 911 from Jessamy. He was well aware she was on the phone. At one point, she yelled she was speaking with her girlfriend when he grew suspicious.
She told the dispatcher she was being raped and kidnapped, somewhere on Tenth Avenue, near Prospect she thought at the time of the call.
The information provided was vague. The victim provided very little details about the house she was held up at.
The dispatcher received no caller information and at one point in the call, the dispatcher asked for her phone number. She gave the number, but instead, the dispatcher confused a 7 with a 3.
By this time, it’s been a half hour and she is trying desperately while trying to keep her composer to keep Jessamy at a distance. Its not clear as to how the first call became disconnected, but the victim called for a second time and spoke with a second dispatcher.
Meanwhile, Mount Vernon police were on Tenth Ave and Valentine Street which is in the vicinity of Prospect Ave. But unknown to them, the victim was calling from a house on South Tenth Ave which is about a mile south.
The dispatcher is now trying to PING the phone number, not realizing that he is working off the wrong number. They pinged the number, which came back to an address in New Rochelle. They contacted New Rochelle Police who then called the wrong number. It was at that time they spoke with a resident who was not involved.
#MVPD then tried pinging the number again this time thru TMobile. This time a hit came back to an address in the Bronx. NYPD dispatched officers from the 43rd precinct located the owner who said he just got this number and was not in any danger.Its not clear as to how the first became disconnected, but the victim called again and spoke with a second dispatcher who didn’t verify any information.
According to Lohud, she told the second dispatcher “He’s beating me up. He’s raping me,”. The dispatcher asked the victim if she knew the name of her attacker and she said he goes by the name of “Fella”, but the MVPD dispatcher mistaken her for saying the name “Stella.
It was also reported that the communication room located at the Mount Vernon Police Department was very noisy and there was loud talking in the background making it hard for the dispatcher to hear the caller.
I recently visited the communications room this past December, and it was not a pleasant experience. The room is very small and cluttered, dispatchers sit on top of each other, and there is consistent radio chatter from officers in the field. During my visit, I only saw two dispatchers. One dispatcher takes both calls and manages the radio transmissions.
At this point the victim becomes very upset, she starts to cry and says “He’s beating me up. He’s raping me,” she told the dispatchers. It’s also unclear when the police realized they were working with the wrong number. But it’s very clear hours were wasted because police were spent searching for a victim in the wrong location because of technical and human error.
She didn’t give up and for the third time, she called 911 again – this time outside of a church two blocks from Jessamys house. She spoke with the same dispatcher she spoke with the first time she called and the dispatcher stayed on the line with her until police showed up. It was at that time she went into more detail as to what happened. She claims she couldn’t breathe when Jessamy was trying to choke her and also claims he threatened to throw her out of the window if she didn’t obey his orders. She admitted at one point in the call that she considered NOT calling the police, but said “I can’t have no one beating on me no matter who he is,” she said. Nine minutes later after the third call was initiated police finally made contact with the victim. This is after she suffered severe head trauma and fractured ribs. She was very frustrated with the police not being able to find her which resulted in her being attacked by Jessamy. “I called twice and nobody ever came,” she bemoaned. “He kept beating me up.”
She was taken to Westchester County Medical Center where she was treated.
Commissioner Shawn Harris told Lohud, that the police were actively searching for the victim when she was able to break loose from Jessamy and leave the house around 9:30 pm.
On October 29th, 2018 Thomas Jessamy, 58, of Mount Vernon was convicted of:
– Attempted Rape in the First Degree, a class C felony
– Assault in the Second Degree, a class D felony
– Unlawful Imprisonment in the First Degree, a class E felony
– Assault in the Third Degree, a misdemeanor
Jessamy is a lifelong Mount Vernon resident who has a wrap sheet the size of Long Island, which includes a history of abusive behavior toward women.
Back in 1989, he beat a woman so badly, that she could not speak with detectives about the attack when first taken to the hospital. He was convicted of second-degree assault and sentenced to two to four years in prison for that attack. While on parole in 1992, for beating up women in 89, he was arrested twice, including once on a harassment charge when he was accused of threatening another woman he knew.
These days cell, cable, and VOIP services are used quite often and this poses a challenge for the 911 call dispatchers because these services if not routed correctly do not provide the caller’s phone numbers or addresses like landline calls do.
Residents in the vicinity of the Mount Vernon/Bronx border need to be aware that cell tower issues could affect 911 calls from southern parts of Mount Vernon, as well as Yonkers and Pelham Manor when calls hit New York City.
Commissioner Harris said his department would be upgrading its communication systems. “In real-life crisis situations, the fact is that information and technology are never as good as you would like them to be,” said Mount Vernon police Commissioner Shawn Harris. “That’s never going to change. But what can change is improving our capabilities by learning from each experience.”
Jessamy is in a county jail awaiting sentencing. He is expected to appear in front of County Judge Susan Cacace on Jan 29. Jessamy was scheduled to be sentenced back in December, but he challenged the validity of a previous conviction which caused the delay and requires a hearing – Jan 29th.
Westchester County District Attorney Anthony Scarpino praised the work of the Sex Crimes Unit, “Due to the emotional and challenging nature of this type of violent crime, it is not always easy to prosecute, but through the dedication and hard work of ADA Michelle Lopez, Chief of our Sex Crimes Bureau, and her colleagues, we were able to get justice for the victim of this heinous crime and reestablish her faith in the system.”
Photo (above) of Thomas Jessamy of Mount Vernon, Courtesy of lohud.com. He attends a hearing with his attorney Tamika Coverdale and another unknown attorney at the Westchester County Courthouse in White Plains on Dec. 18, 2018.
