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Sunday, April 13, 2008

911 Caller Speaks Out So Tragedy Won't Be Repeated

TAMPA - Jane Kowalski had never called 911 in her life. As she talked with her sister on her cell phone while driving into Charlotte County in mid-January, however, she knew something was wrong.

Kowalski saw the man driving the car next to her reach into the back seat and hit something. Then she heard screaming, and a banging sound so loud that her sister on the phone thought someone was striking Kowalski's window.

The next nine minutes on the phone with a 911 operator would thrust Kowalski, 45, of Tampa into the center of a heinous crime that jarred normally laid-back Southwest Florida. It also has made her the touchstone for an emerging debate about flaws in Florida's 911 systems, a vital component of emergency response and public safety.

Since last week's release of investigative materials into the kidnapping, rape and murder of 21-year-old North Port mother Denise Lee, Kowalski has been prodded by local and national news organizations to discuss her role.

She is not entirely comfortable in the role. She is cautious, and she is sensitive to the impact on Lee's family, running media interview requests past Lee's husband, Nathan, and father, Charlotte County Sheriff's Sgt. Rick Goff.

As she demonstrated Jan. 17, when she made the 911 call, she also is perceptive and persistent. She hired a lawyer to advise her as she navigates through unfamiliar territory. She is determined to do what she has to as a potential witness in a capital murder case and in light of the Lee family's recently announced plan to sue Charlotte County and its sheriff's office over the mishandling of her call.

Chance Encounter

Kowalski has decided that repeating her story and pointing to the things that went wrong are part of her life now - though in doing so she remains low-key.

"I want to be very clear," Kowalski said. "This is not about me in any way. It is so about Denise and the fact that this, you know, happened, the fact that maybe there could be a different outcome to this if there would have been a different response to my call, and that's how I factor into it.

"But still, it's not about me. It's about Denise."

Kowalski would not even have been on U.S. 41 in northern Charlotte County had it not been raining and getting dark when she left her husband's office in Bradenton that day. Normally, she would have taken Interstate 75 to visit her sister and 91-year-old grandmother in Fort Myers.

Heading south in her compact Mercedes-Benz, and talking on her cell phone through a headset, Kowalski looked into the face of a man driving next to her.

She slowed down to try to get the car's license plate number after hearing the screaming and banging, but the driver matched her speed, startling Kowalski even more.

Kowalski abruptly ended the conversation with her sister and dialed 911.

Because of her location, the call was routed to Charlotte County's 911 center.

4 Sheriff's Cruisers Were Close By

For nine minutes, Kowalski stayed on the phone with the operator, pacing the suspicious car beside her for four of them.

"I'm giving cross streets," she said, recounting the conversation with Charlotte 911 operator Mildred Stepp. "I'm saying, you know, exactly where we are, what we're doing and everything.

"And my understanding is there were a number of police cars around there at that time," she said Friday. "So someone should have been able to get there."

Later research would show that four Charlotte County sheriff's cruisers were close by. At least one may have even passed by on the northbound side of U.S. 41.

Kowalski thought the small hand she saw frantically banging the window belonged to a child. When the dispatcher asked how old the child might be, Kowalski had a hard time estimating. She has two cats, but no children, and guessed between 5 and 10.

A recently released recording of the call showed that the 911 operator was clearly distracted, repeatedly asking Kowalski to "bear with" her.

The scene was so bizarre, Kowalski offered to follow the car to give authorities a better bead on it.

The operator, conferring with others in the call center, did not give Kowalski an answer in time for her to follow the car's abrupt left turn from U.S. 41 onto Toledo Blade Boulevard.

Kowalski remembers the look on the face of the man she later would identify as Michael King, who has been charged with kidnapping, raping and murdering Lee, the mother of two young boys.

"It was just a look," Kowalski said. "His face didn't look crazed. He didn't look scared. He just looked like nothing was happening."

Kowalski asked authorities to call her back, to let her know what happened. The operator told Kowalski the authorities had what they needed from her. Kowalski went on to visit her family.

Not prone to overreact, she told the operator she did not want to be "overdramatic" but had called just in case a serious crime was being committed.

The operator told her she had done the right thing.

Calling Back

By the next day, the face of the man she said she had seen was plastered all over television. King had been arrested, but he was caught alone.

Kowalski wondered about the person who had been screaming.

At the time, hundreds of people were searching for Lee.

"My thoughts were like, oh my God, what happened?" Kowalski said.

She called the North Port Police Department to ask if King was the man she had called about the previous night. Because Kowalski's 911 call was taken in Charlotte County, however, North Port knew nothing about it.

North Port police were dealing with the search and investigating King. Hundreds of people were calling the department. Television crews were camped in the parking lot. If police needed her help, they told Kowalski, the department would call.

Again, Kowalski went about her business, visiting with family in Fort Myers, but what she had seen nagged at her. In her career as a project manager, Kowalski had overseen the software installations in 911 call centers.

She was familiar with the system, how every piece of information was logged into computers and tracked, responded to, and saved.

Why had no one called her?

She contacted the North Port police tip line, just for good measure. This time, nearly three days after her 911 call, investigators responded. They were flabbergasted by what she had to say.

"I wish more witnesses out there were like Jane Kowalski," said North Port Detective Chris Morales, the lead investigator in the Lee case. "She knew something wasn't right. She just kept calling back, wanted to make sure she was heard."

Kowalski learned that she was among the last people to see Denise Lee alive.

She is concerned about how her call was handled and what that means for public safety.

"I think this is a very important cause, and, you know, whatever I need to do to provide them the information that they need, I'm willing to do," Kowalski said.

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