Dispatcher Talks to Suspect, Arranges Surrender

In the middle of the night, talking to a distraught 19 year-old man who had called 911, and listening to an incredible story, a Catawba County (NC) sheriff’s dispatcher did everything right. She was composed, she was focused and she arranged the safe surrender of a man who admitted to killing and mutilating another man during a gay sex encounter. The dispatcher, who hasn’t been named, took every word of Michael Anderson’s story in stride. She told him to put down the gun that he was still holding, and told him she was sending him help. “I’m sorry ma’am, but the ax is inside his stomach,” the man said at one point. The dispatcher repeatedly asked the man for assurance that he wasn’t holding any weapons, and Anderson said he was not. She instructed him to sit in a chair in the room nearest the front door and, when he began to feel panicked, she asked him to take some deep breaths to calm down. The tape ends before deputies arrived, but Anderson was safely taken into custody, and is now charged with murder. Read the story and listen to the amazing logging tape of the 911 call here.