CLEVELAND COUNTY, N.C. — The Cleveland County 911 dispatcher who helped get a family to safety while suspects were shooting into their car spoke to Channel 9 about the experience.
Investigators said the suspects involved in that shooting later crashed into a Shelby home. Three young men died.
The dispatcher told Channel 9′s Ken Lemon she was in a cubicle in her secure building. It was a far cry from the mother who called 911 from her car with her family on a dark rural road while bullets were flying at them. Yet that mother told Lemon the woman on the other end of her call for help understood her struggle, and that saved their lives.
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Brenda Wray’s fear, which was bordering terror, is palpable in the recording of her 911 call.
Caller: “Hurry! We are at a crossing now and we can’t stop.”
It was met with reassurance and empathy by dispatcher Tequila Clemmons.
Dispatcher: “It’s going to be OK. Tell me your name.”
Wray told Lemon that Clemmons and her calm voice saved her life.
“It’s like she felt our fear and she was trying to keep us calm,” Wray said.
Wray was in her Charger with four children, ages 10 to18, when a truck full of strangers started shooting at them early Sunday. She thinks they targeted the wrong car but said they followed for 15 miles, shooting repeatedly. Clemmons stayed on the phone with them.
Caller: “Just keep driving, OK?”
“Pretend they are one of your family members,” Clemmons said to Lemon. “And how you would want that person on the phone helping them?”
Clemmons lives in Shelby and knows the roads.
“Very dark. It’s hard to see,” she said. “Especially the road that she was coming down, there are barely streetlights.”
She kept the family moving, as Wray’s 18-year-old daughter, a brand new driver, was at the wheel.
“She gave us that, that little bit of hope,” Wray said. “That little bit of hope that everything is going to be OK.”
There was so much relief when it ended with no one in the car hurt.
Dispatcher: “Take a deep breath for me.”
Caller: (cries)
The truck with the people reportedly shooting at Wray’s car went airborne and landed on a home in Shelby. Three young men died.
Wray said they all feel the pain of that tragedy, but she’s grateful for Clemmons.
“I just thank her so much from the bottom of my heart,” Wray said.
The two women said they want to meet soon and thank each other for getting through this together.
(WATCH PREVIOUS: ‘I was that guy’ says nurse who treated patients in deadly Shelby chase, crash)
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