Mar 11, 2008 10:13 pm US/Central
Dispatchers Honored For Work During NIU Shootings
OREGON, Ill. (CBS) ―
Three 911 operators who answered frantic calls from the Northern Illinois University shootings were given a bittersweet honor Tuesday.
CBS 2's Katie McCall reports they are credited with a swift response that saved lives.
Just minutes after starting her 3'o clock shift on Valentine's Day, Linda Besler was dispatching emergency responders to a college campus shooting in her own back yard.
"My initial one was from a guy running out of there," Besler said. "He said there was a gunman everyone is running, he said."
The Power Phone Company that trained Besler and two other dispatchers presented them with plaques for demonstrating exemplary skills on the day of the NIU shooting that left five students and the gunman dead, and 16 others injured.
"One of my callers was a student who was in the room, witnessed some of the shooting, got out of there [and] he was headed back to his dorm room when he called me, and he couldn't remember where he lived, and so I just had to keep asking him, and turn into mom mode or a sympathetic ear, and finally he could remember," said Deputy Diane Russell of the DeKalb Co. Sheriff's Dept.
The three who received awards Tuesday say the training they received in classes helped them to save lives in the aftermath of the shooting.
"Having the response time being so short and the amount of lives that were saved it does make you feel good," Besler said.
"You're not happy to help people in tragedies, but you're happy that you're of assistance that you can do something," said NIU Police Department Dispatcher Sam Denton.
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