CHATSWORTH, Ga. - Andrea Petty is haunted by the 911 call she answered nine days ago and wonders if she could have done anything differently.
Petty, a 15-year dispatcher, was working at the Murrary County 911 Center on Aug. 26 when she got a call from Mindy Bullard in Dawnville, Ga., at 4:35 p.m.
"I need the police at my house right now," Bullard cried into the phone.
"I probably get six calls like hers a day," Petty, 36, said more than a week later - calls about boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and husbands.
She couldn't do anything about Bullard's call, which came from Rainbow Drive in Whitfield County. She forwarded Bullard's message about a drunk man disturbing her daughter's birthday party to Whitfield 911 and asked authorities to be on the lookout for his truck.
But she didn't pass on the request for police, recordings of the call show.
Four hours later, Bullard's ex-boyfriend, David Hartline, showed up at her home on Rainbow Drive armed. He fatally shot Bullard's father and ex-husband before dying in a crossfire.
"I wish that they [Whitfield authorities] had seen him and been able to stop him. I gave the information I had," Petty said through tears on Friday.
The families of Bullard's father, Edward Manz III, 61, and ex-husband, Kenneth Simonson, 41, blame emergency workers and police for their loved ones' deaths.
"That could have all been prevented if they would have come the first time," said Manz's brother, Michael, choking back tears.
Whitfield County officials say they would have sent a patrol car if they had been warned that Bullard had asked for police.
"I do wish we had gotten that information," said Jeff Ownby, Whitfield County 911 director. "If the call had come to our 911 center, we would have sent an officer."
He said complaints had been made from the Bullard house in Dawnville several times before.
Murrary County 911 director Peggy Vick said Petty followed proper policies and gave all the information dispatchers needed to send police to the house.
It wasn't Petty's fault that a deputy wasn't dispatched to check on the family, Vick said.
At the 911 Center on Friday, Petty looked at her monitors and told the sheriff's office through her earpiece that a woman was receiving threatening text messages from her estranged husband.
"It kind of makes you think," she said. "Is the next one going to be similar?"
Petty said she has talked to mothers screaming as they found their babies dead from SIDS and listened as a former teacher tried futilely to save her husband from a heart attack.
Each call affects her differently, she said.
"A lot of us go home thinking, 'How could I have helped them?'" she said. "You just wish you could actually reach out and help them."
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