Florida:5YR old girl calls 911 after parents shot

[CFHSNJROTC]

Source:cnn.com

Girl, 5, calls 911 after parents shot dead




Thursday, March 31, 2005 Posted: 11:06 AM EST (1606 GMT)


var clickExpire = "04/30/2005";NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Florida (AP) -- As her parents lay mortally wounded, a 5-year-old girl called 911, telling an emergency dispatcher, "I think they're dead."
Police said Aeneas and Julie Hernlen were shot to death early Monday by a man who mistakenly believed the couple had turned him in for drug possession. Their daughter was not harmed.

Investigators said the gunman, David Edward Johnson, 33, committed suicide later Monday. The Hernlens had nothing to do with his drug arrest last year, authorities said.

The girl first told the dispatcher that she saw a bullet on the floor, her father was bleeding and he "fell off the bed."

When the dispatcher, Donna Choufani, asked where her mother was, the child answered, "She is, I don't know, I think they're dead."

"What do you mean sweetheart?," Choufani asked calmly.

"I don't know," the child replied.

The operator told her someone would come over to her house and asked the girl if anyone else was home, her age and her pets -- a dog and three cats.

At one point, Choufani asked, "Are you the only one there besides Mommy and Daddy?

Said the child: "Well, I said `Mommy' and `Daddy,' and they didn't even answer."

"Can you send a deputy down here?" she said at another point. The dispatcher instructed the girl to unlock her front door.

Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson praised the girl's composure and Choufani's professionalism.

"She was an amazing little girl," Johnson said Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "The information she gave us and the manner she gave it to us, we wish we could get that out of adults."

The sheriff said other relatives are caring for the girl.

The child gave details on the cars parked outside and the color of the house, telling Choufani, "it's yellow, all yellow house, of green, green with it, a little bit of green, and a pink door." Her mom picked the door's color, the girl said.

"You are so smart for 5 years old," Choufani told her. "Wow!"

[brooklyn6]

yeah

[Ram0528]

they played the call on fox news last night....terribly sad, but she sounded very composed & mature for her age..

[AngelBear]

What a horrible thing to experience at such a young age.

[CoastieDrummer]

very sad indeed, that one is brave little girl who needs someone good to help her grow up.