AKRON, Ohio — It's a call an Akron woman said will forever play on repeat in her head. Because she's an alleged sexual assault victim, we've agreed to conceal her identity.
Her story first hit airwaves in August 2024 after 32-year-old Issac Armour allegedly attacked her in the 1100 block of Cuyahoga Street at the Valley View area of Cascade Valley Metro Park.
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Akron Police said the 33-year-old woman left a bathroom and was grabbed by a stranger who began assaulting her.
The Akron Communications Center received 343,000 emergency phone calls in 2024. The woman's call was just one of many.
While being attacked, the woman used the SOS feature on her phone to call 911.
Her 911 call has never been released to the public until now. The victim in this case also said she hadn't heard the recorded call until a week before we sat down with her to review it.
"It was a hesitation to even release it to the public. It just catches your attention, and it's just scary," Akron Communications Center Civilian Supervisor Michelle Nicholson told me.
In the call, you can hear her struggling, pleading for help.
"Please! Please get off of me," she tells her assailant while on the phone with an Akron emergency operator. "Please. I'm being assaulted. I'm being assaulted."
The Akron 911 call taker asks her for an address and for more details as to who's attacking her.
"A man. A man is attacking me! I go to the bathroom and he's trying to sexually assault me," she tells the operator.
As the woman struggled, a man could be heard in the background of the call, trying to convince the call taker that there was no emergency.
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"She's joking," he says.
The victim tells the operator she isn't joking, and that's where the tone of the call seemingly shifts.
"Ma'am! Calm down!" the 911 operator shouts at the victim.
Again, the victim pleads with the call taker to send help immediately. Meanwhile, a man's voice is picked up, saying, "She's making a big deal. She does this all the time."
Eventually, the man tells the victim, "That's it. We're having sex."
She begins screaming.
"I can remember the shift in my mind that this person [the Akron emergency operator] isn't going to be able to help me, so I have to keep screaming and pray that someone shows up in front of me," the woman tells us in an interview.
Luckily, three women, all in their 60s, are walking the same trail and overhear the commotion.
"There’s other people here! There’s other people here! Oh my God. Please. I’ve got someone on! They can’t get my location," the victim explains to the emergency operator.
"We're playing a game," the man tells the three women.
"No, we're not! No, we're not," the victim yells.
You gotta stop screaming.
As the other women are noticeably closer to the victim's phone, the emergency operator tells the victim to put someone else on the phone.
"Put somebody else on the phone," the operator says.
The call is about 13 minutes long, but the first few minutes, where the victim is told to calm down and to stop screaming while allegedly actively being sexually assaulted, is a conversation that she said will stick with her.
"It was so upsetting that shift in tone because it was like I wasn't believed until someone else was there to say they saw it and it happened," the victim told me. "It made me question, you know, 'was I being irrational?' It left me with so many questions and doubts about my experience."
I spoke with former Maryland Police Captain and veteran emergency operator, Sonia Pruitt, about the call and asked if, in her opinion, it was handled appropriately.
"You don't tell someone who is going through some sort of trauma to stop screaming or to calm down because those are very natural and human responses to perhaps an assault," Pruitt told me. "There's training on what are the things that you need to be asking and what questions, what kind of information do you need to be collecting."
The Akron Communication Center confirms there is a lengthy training at the start of hire, which includes seven weeks' worth of preparation as well as a probationary period of a year.
"Throughout that year we train them in different positions in here," Akron Communications Center Civilian Supervisor, Thomas Donahue said. "The state only requires you to get 40 hours of minimum training to be a dispatcher, and that's in the revised code. What we do here, we already exceed those standards."
Pruitt said the Akron call taker asked the right questions: What's your address? What's your name? What's going on?
However, Pruitt said the operator's tone seemingly became insensitive very quickly.
"She just sounded dismissive to me," Pruitt told me.
Because of that tone, the victim said she was losing hope.
"I wasn’t feeling like someone was coming relative to a first responder based off of how I was being spoken to by the dispatcher," she explained. "I remember being told by the dispatcher to calm down, so before hearing it, I was like, I must not have been clear at all, and then I listened to it. I was shocked by how clear I was. I said my first and last name. I described what he was doing to me. I thought I was going to be incoherent and I was very coherent. At no point was I told help is on its way or, 'I'm here with you. Stay with me. You're not alone.'"
The Akron emergency operator has not been identified to News 5, but we asked the victim if there was anything she wanted to say to the person.
"During a traumatic event like this, there are these immediate touch points that you get: the dispatcher, the first responders, people who may show up at the scene. I understand now more than ever that they play such a critical role in how the victim processes the event in that moment and into the future. They play the biggest part in kind of helping the victim narrate the event, process it, understand it, and feel supported, and they have the ability to help this victim walk away feeling more supported or to feel very alone, even more alone than they already probably feel. I understand people are human, that we are all busy and that we're all up against a lot. I just hope that more care can be given to responses in the future because it was a lot," the victim said.
Both Nicholson and Donahue told me they hadn't listened to the entirety of the call until March.
"Why not listen to it after it happened?" I asked the pair.
"It's not to say that it was not listened to. In the public records request for the actual call, we will go back and listen to it again and that's when I was alerted to listen to the call," Nicholson said.
After reflecting on the call, Donahue said it serves as a reminder of how important obtaining the location of a caller is.
"As a call taker, it's frustrating knowing that you're not getting that help to that person that's obviously in distress," Donahue added.
I asked Donahue and Nicholson if they believe the operator handled the call appropriately.
The answer from both: "overall, yes."
"You could tell that the call taker was trying to obtain that location and a lot of times when you're processing these calls, something you have to do is redirect the caller or get them to gain compliance, if you would," Donahue said. "The call taker did stay on the line until she knew that someone was there to help. Oftentimes when there's emotion involved in the calls, well, yes, you try to show empathy towards the caller, but they also have a job to make sure that those first responders are actually en route to get them the help that they desperately need."
I brought up moments of the call where the victim was told to stop screaming and to calm down, and asked once more if they felt the operator handled the situation well by making those comments.
"I would say yes because at the time of the call we're only getting so much. She does not know exactly what is taking place and there are calls that do come in we are not able to control as a dispatcher. You have to have some sort of control of the call to get the correct information necessary to get the call started," Nicholson said.
Location being noted as one of the most important aspects of a 911 call, Donahue said the Communications Center has already made adjustments to be better prepared for any calls that come from Akron parks or wooded areas.
"In our CAD system now, we've made all common names for the Summit County Metro Park, so it would make it easier for the call taker to find that location," Donahue said. "Entering a call for service inside a metro park isn't always the easiest thing to do."
The Akron Communications Center also has a rapid response feature where a caller's latitude and longitude will pop up, but Donahue explained that it provides more of a vicinity of where the person is.
Moving forward, Donahue also stated, while he believes this call was handled appropriately, it may be used as a "teachable moment."
"Maybe we will play that call for future people that are hired here to show them that, 'Hey, these are the types of calls that you're going to be taking. Put yourself in that seat. How would you respond?'" Donahue explained.
Donahue confirms the emergency operator on this call has not and will not face any disciplinary action.
"Do you forgive her (the emergency operator) now? I don't even know if forgiveness plays into something like this," I asked the victim on this call.
"It was never for me something that I held against this person," she told me. "I would hope that no one else has to be made to feel the way I was. "
As she inches towards the one-year mark of the attack, she said she's continuing to heal, but constantly thinks back to that day.
"Some days I can really feel the effects of it on my body. I can see how I look at the world a little bit differently now," she said. "But I feel just blessed by the support that I've been shown from friends, family, the news."
She now looks to the future and how she can be an advocate for other victims.
Her alleged attacker, Armour, is in Summit County Jail on a $500,000 bond.
The criminal case is still ongoing.
