“Are we going to be able to get my daughter out of there?” The haunting question posed by a mother who had already buried one daughter due to domestic violence, and almost lost another, echoes what advocates say is still a deeply flawed emergencyresponse system.
In 2012, Deanna Cook, a young Dallaswoman, desperately dialed 911 as her estranged husband, Delvecchio Patrick, attacked her inside her home.
Her panicked pleas for help were recorded, but no officer arrived in time. By the time police entered her home—days later—she was dead, her body found in a bathtub. She had been choked and drowned. Her death, recorded in chilling real-time, became a symbol of systemic failure in responding to domestic violence…