Kentucky State Police are investigating the death of a 38-year-old woman found stabbed 11 times in a Floyd County home earlier this month, but Amber Spradlin’s death has brought close scrutiny to the way 911 calls are handled in the county and the city of Prestonburg.
Spradlin’s family says that someone called 911 from the home where she was found dead on June 18, but law enforcement didn’t respond to the call for several hours. By then, they said, it was far too late.
Spradlin had been out with friends and her boss on June 17, and they ended up at the home on Arkansas Creek later in the the evening.
“She was stabbed not once, not twice, not three times…she was stabbed eleven times in her head, her neck and her throat,” her cousin, Debbie Hall, said at a news conference on Thursday.
Those are some of the few details they know about the brutal murder. Mark Wohlander, an attorney representing the family, said he thinks detectives have a suspect and are waiting on DNA analysis from the gruesome crime scene, WHAS reported.
“It was brutal. There was blood everywhere. There was blood everywhere — blood mixed with other blood,” Wohlander said.
Wohlander and family members say they’re confident in the investigation being conducted by state police, but they’re very concerned with the 911 issue. Six months ago, Floyd County decided to transfer its 911 services contract from state police to the Prestonburg Police Department because of cost. But Prestonburg Mayor Les Stapleton says he never promised the city would handle all of the county’s 911 calls.
Instead, Stapleton said — during the December meeting where the county’s Fiscal Court decided to give the city the contract for 911 calls — that the city would “try” to respond to calls outside the city limits but that such calls would be decided on a case by case basis, WYMT reported.
“The City of Prestonsburg Police is a stellar organization supported by a stellar 911 Center,” the mayor said in a statement released this week. “They offer around the clock police protection 365 days a year, but their priority is, and must be the City of Prestonsburg as they are the taxpayers who fund the department’s existence. With that priority, we still have done our absolute best to assist outside of town when resources allow us.”
It’s not clear who made the 911 call from the home, what time it was made, or what was said. Wohlander said he hadn’t listened to the call, preferring to let state police handle their investigation unhindered. The question for him and Spradlin’s family is simply why did no one respond.
“I just don’t know what in the world would have gone so wrong to result in what happened. There was a 911 call and no one went,” Hall said.
The Prestonburg Police Department said only that their dispatch center didn’t receive a call from Amber Spradlin that night.
Regardless of what exactly happened that night, Wohlander said, he plans to ask Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear for his assistance in moving 911 services for Floyd County back to the state police.
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[Featured image: Amber Spradlin/Facebook]
