A Desperate Call For Help Unanswered
Bitch, I’m going to shoot you!”
The vulgar threat echoes through her dreams. It haunts her waking hours. But angry words are a fraction of Norma Bratton’s pain.
Day and night, she sees the redhaired neighbor with wild eyes who uttered them. He stands in the small front yard outside his shabby beige home at Olympic and Freya. It is maybe 10 feet to the east of the smaller tan home of Norma’s late mother.
Frame by frozen frame, Norma sees Peter Welp reach into his yellow Ford Bronco. He pulls out a .270-caliber deer rifle. He swings the barrel toward her.
He opens fire.
As it was last Jan. 11, Norma’s legs are full of concrete. She is caught in her mom’s tiny yard. There’s nothing the 5-foot woman can do to keep the bullets away.
“It was like I couldn’t run fast enough,” says Norma, 37, who plans to sue Spokane’s 911 emergency system for allegedly not heeding her brother’s frantic calls for help. “You think if you get scared you can run away. But I couldn’t.”
Being shot was just the bitter beginning of Norma’s torment.
Worried sick about his critically wounded wife, Steve Bratton, 35, choked to death in his sleep a week later at Deaconess Medical Center.
Barely learning to walk again, the woman believes her spiral of misfortune would not have started had 911 done its job. Attorney Dana Kelley today plans to file a $15 million claim against the Spokane Police Department.
Earlier on the day of the shooting, the lawsuit will allege, Welp threatened to kill Norma’s brother, Jerry Brown.
Welp’s threats had escalated since late December, when Norma says she caught him stealing the battery out of her mother’s car. On Jan. 4, police confronted Welp, who slammed his front door on them.
The officers, Norma says, promised to come back if Welp grew more threatening.
Brown, 42, definitely needed the cavalry on Jan. 11. He was running an estate sale at his mother’s home when he dialed 911. According to the tort claim, a dispatcher told Brown Welp’s verbal threats didn’t amount to an emergency.
“Call Crime Check,” the woman told him. Brown dialed that number. The same voice answered. “This whole thing irritates me like nothing else,” says Brown.
When Norma arrived, witnesses say Welp went ballistic. Brown again dialed 911. He was being transferred to Crime Check when the shooting began.
The first bullet shattered Norma’s hip. Another bullet tore into her leg. Watching the carnage, Brown threw his body over his sister.
After five shots, witnesses say, Welp drove away in his Bronco. He was arrested later at a convenience store.
Welp, 33, remains in jail facing trial this fall for first-degree attempted murder. Police say the logger admitted he was aiming to kill.
It is understandably difficult to sue law enforcement agencies for how resources are deployed. Just because we pay taxes for protection doesn’t mean we will always be protected.
City attorneys won’t respond until they see Norma’s lawsuit. But they will invariably argue that the dispatcher couldn’t have foreseen what happened.
There are legal exceptions when a special relationship is established with a citizen. That may have happened when police vowed to come running should Norma or her family need them.
It would be great to hear what was said on those 911 tapes. Unfortunately, lawyer Kelley’s attempt to get a copy met a dead end.
The tapes were recorded over. The law, explains 911 administrator Dick Collins, only requires tapes to be preserved 90 days.
Sounds reasonable. Except that Kelley’s request was made on April 1 - day 79 from the shooting.
What? More bad luck?
After all Norma Bratton has been through, can anyone be surprised?
, DataTimes