STATter 911

Recordings of 911 calls and emergency radio transmissions are providing a more complete picture of last Saturday's mass casualty incident at a street festival in Anacostia. It was during Unifest that D.C. Police say 30 year old Tonya Bell drove her Volvo station wagon into the crowd, injuring almost 40 people.

EMS Captain Henry Lyles has been a part of DC Fire and EMS for more than 30 years. His job is to run the Special Events Unit of Special Operations. Captain Lyles, and a crew assigned to Medic 59, were already at Unifest providing EMS support for the event.

At 7:52 p.m., Lyles called on his radio to the District of Columbia Office of Unified Communications (911 Center): "I just had a car drive through the crowd. I don't know how many people got hit, if any. But go ahead and start me an engine and ambulance to King and W right now".

Witnesses said Lyles helped to push people out of the vehicle's path. He had to do it all over again about three minutes later. The station wagon came around the block and headed right back to the area of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and W Street, Southeast.

During that second pass, Lyles was on the radio getting a run down of the units responding to his call for help. Captain Lyles told the dispatcher to hold on and seconds later said: "Sorry about that, but this crazed driver just tried to run us all over".

At the same time, people all around the street festival called 911 and asked for help. The callers gave multiple locations along the path the Volvo cut through the festival.

D.C. Police had already been aware of the Volvo because it hit an unmarked police vehicle about 15 minutes earlier, at a location more than 3 miles away. The recordings confirm what D.C. Police officials said on Sunday, that orders were given to stop chasing the Volvo after the detective's car was hit. At that point, the driver of the vehicle was only wanted for a traffic offense.

Just moments before the Volvo was driven into the crowd at Unifest, officers again spotted the vehicle. The next radio transmissions came from police officers trying to get the vehicle stopped and help for the victims. One police officer told the dispatcher: "Give me every ambulance in the city down here".

Court documents state that Tonya Bell claimed to have been smoking crack cocaine all day on Saturday. Her 7-year-old daughter was in the vehicle during the incident. The girl was not physically injured.

Henry Lyles told STATter 911 on Thursday that he had never been in a situation quite like this one. Captain Lyles said he was proud of how DC Fire and EMS responded to the emergency.

You can hear a condensed version of Captain Henry Lyles transmissions and some of the 911 callers from our 5 p.m. report.

For a condensed version of the police radio traffic watch our 6 p.m. report.

We also have unedited versions of the first ten minutes of the incident from different perspectives:

EMS radio traffic
911 Calls
Police radio traffic after detective's car is struck
Police radio traffic as the vehicle drove through the street festival.

Note: In the link labeled "911 Call", there are unedited conversations of an emotional moment. It may contain inappropriate language.