CHARLOTTE — Newly released 911 calls are shedding light on the timeline leading up to a shootout between CMPD officers and a man police say was armed with a gun.
Police said Darnell Simms’ wife first called 911 last month, saying Simms was coming to her home in northeast Charlotte.
She told the dispatcher she had asked him to leave her alone and said he had tried to break her glass.
That call came in at 9:15 p.m.
[ PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Neighbors describe terrifying moments during northeast Charlotte police shooting ]
Nearly an hour later, she called back to make sure police had received the first call. The next call was logged at 10:36 p.m.
“He’s on the way to my house with a gun,” she told the dispatcher. “Like, I don’t know what else to do. Do I need to be dead for someone to pull up?”
She later told 911 she was scared because of how long it had taken officers to arrive.
CMPD says when officers eventually arrived, Simms fired shots at them. Officers returned fire.
CMPD told Channel 9 the call did not meet the department’s 20-minute response-time goal. The time between the first and last calls was about an hour and 15 minutes.
The department said it has been meeting its overall response-time targets, but officers were handling roughly twice the normal number of calls at the time.