CLEVELAND — Jim Sidelka says his daughter’s violent death destroyed him, and he still can’t get answers about whether police were too slow to save her.
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“I have trouble just getting up every day, trying to socialize and being a human being, I just can't take it anymore,” he said.
Sidelka’s daughter, Carly Capek, was killed more than eight months ago.
Days after her death, Mayor Justin Bibb called for an internal affairs investigation into the police response time.
All her family and their attorney say they want to know is whether there was a breakdown in the police response.
Today, their attorney is pressing the City of Cleveland for the immediate release of the final internal affairs report.
“It just totally turned me upside down. It destroyed my life,” Sidelka said.
Capek was beaten, bitten and slashed, according to her family and neighbors, who also say police took too long to show up.
The call for internal affairs to step in came at the highest level nearly one week after the brutal killing.
"It's under investigation by Internal Affairs,” Cleveland Public Safety Director Karrie Howard confirmed last September.
Mayor Bibb said the investigation was initiated "to address any structural concerns that we see in that kind of response. I wasn't happy about it."
Records show the call to this house originated as a priority one felonious assault — one of 10 priority one calls in the same time frame that day.
Here’s what we’ve been able to piece together from police records.
At 12:32 p.m., dispatchers got the first 911 call.
At 12:36 p.m., the first officer responded to the call, driving from District 2 police station to Carly’s house on W. 78th street.
The officer arrived at 12:46 p.m., 14 minutes after the first 911 call.
"If they did wrong, they should be held accountable. Simple as that,” family attorney Terry Gilbert said.
But Gilbert says he’s in the dark on this one with not even a letter acknowledging his request for records.
He believes the city is stalling by saying the case is still under investigation.
The suspect in Capek's killing, Calvin Nettles, is expected to stand trial next month.
"They're two different investigations and one doesn't have anything to do with the other. So we feel if that's their excuse, it's not a good excuse,” Gilbert said.
Gilbert wrote a letter to the safety director, police chief, mayor and law director, demanding the immediate release of the internal affairs report.
"There's no downside; it's important to have transparency, not only for the family but the community, because this impacts everyone,” Gilbert said.
News 5 Investigators repeatedly asked for the same record, starting late last September. We still haven’t received it. Instead, last week, we got some general police orders, but nothing conclusive on this case.
"The thing is, the front door to the home was wide open, and nobody had the courage to go in there and try to stop this man,” Sidelka said.
Carly’s father says the wait for justice and for some answers from police is grueling.
"I've lost plenty of people but never like this. This is such a hard burden on me that I can't handle it. I just want to bury my head and give up on everything,” Sidelka said.
Police told us the response time case has made it through internal affairs and it’s now in the final stages of review.
Gilbert said that should not take long since the review is designed to redact personal information.
The mayor’s office says it’s reached out to the law department about the letter from Gilbert. We’ve also reached out to the police.
