Pubdate: Thu, 09 Dec 2004 Source: Ledger-Enquirer (GA) Copyright: 2004 Ledger-Enquirer Contact: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/enquirer/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237 Author: Jim Houston Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/kenneth+walker 911 TAPES RECOUNT EVENTS 900 Pages of Related Records From I-185 Shooting Released The voices were calm, the words plain and matter-of-fact. Listeners to the radio calls that night could never have grasped that the words they were hearing would impact so many lives. A mother would lose her son, a wife and child their husband and father. A law enforcement officer would be fired from the only job he ever wanted. A community would find itself questioning its ability to get along. But it happened. And it's captured in the radio calls from the night of Dec. 10, 2003, when Kenneth Walker was shot and killed by then-Muscogee County Sheriff's Deputy David Glisson during a traffic stop on Interstate 185 that was part of a drug investigation. The tape of those transmissions, kept from the public until a grand jury refused to indict Glisson on Nov. 30, was released Wednesday by District Attorney Gray Conger, complying with Georgia Public Records Act requests filed more than 11 months ago by WRBL-TV and the Ledger-Enquirer. Also released were more than 900 pages of investigative reports, interviews and files, completing a process that began last week with the release of a videotape of the traffic stop and shooting, and transcripts of interviews with Glisson conducted by the sheriff's internal investigators. The I-185 stop in stark, matter-of-fact tones, the audio tape begins with Metro Narcotics Task Force agents checking to ensure that sheriff's Special Response Team units were ready to assist in stopping a vehicle containing four men who had visited an Armour Road apartment from which two suspected drug dealers were operating. The Metro agents had watched as the gray GMC Yukon drove up to the Northwoods Apartments, then left after one of the men from the SUV talked to one of the suspected drug dealers. Minutes later, the Yukon returned and one of the men carried something into the suspect's apartment, followed a short time later by the SUV's other three occupants. Officers would later learn that the driver of the vehicle was Warren Beaulah, a teacher and coach at Carver High School. His passengers were Walker, 39, a BlueCross/BlueShield employee, Anthony Smith and Daryl Ransom. No guns or drugs were found in the SUV and none of the occupants were charged in connection with the events. As the sheriff's department's marked cars pulled ahead of the unmarked cars that followed Beulah's Yukon from the apartment onto I-185, a Metro agent radioed the description of the SUV: "That's him in the silver... in the silver vehicle... the silver vehicle," the Metro agent said. "... Go around the pickup... that silver Yukon, silver Yukon." As the marked unit turned on its blue lights and siren at 9:06:18, the officers making the stop were cautioned by one of the agents, "All right, y'all be careful. There's at least four individuals in it." That's the last transmission before the call for medical help is made, but playing the videotape and audiotape together shows that the shooting of Walker, who had been forced from the vehicle by Glisson, occurred about 43 seconds after the sheriff's car's blue lights were turned on. Times recorded at the 911 center on the audio tapes differ from the timestamp on scenes from the videotape of the stop, which were released last week. The audio tapes show that 52 seconds after the two fatal gunshots were fired, a sheriff's unit called for an ambulance. One minute and 15 seconds later, the dispatcher told officers at the scene that an EMS ambulance was on its way. The audio tape shows that an ambulance and fire truck left the 5844 Whitesville Road firehouse at 9:11:49. At 9:16:26 the ambulance arrived at the scene, about halfway between the Manchester Expressway and Macon Road interchanges on southbound I-185. The videotape shows the EMS crew begin rendering aid to Walker, relieving a sheriff's deputy who began applying pressure to the head wound about two minutes after the shooting. About 8 1/2 minutes after they arrived, the medics and Walker were on their way to The Medical Center, with the crew notifying doctors and nurses by radio that their patient had two 9 mm gunshot wounds to the head, had lost a lot of blood and had no regular pulse. Exactly seven minutes after the ambulance crew reported it was Medical Center-bound, a firefighter radioed that the ambulance and crew were out of service at the hospital. More calls from scene There's much more detail and many more transmissions on the tapes released by the district attorney's office. Among the other calls were requests for additional marked cars with blue lights to help slow down I-185 traffic. Other calls summoned senior sheriff's department officers to the scene, sent some to The Medical Center where Walker was taken and others to St. Francis Hospital, where Glisson was taken for blood tests, which is required of all officers involved in shootings. Another call brought a jail van to the scene to take Beaulah, Ransom and Smith to the sheriff's department. Finally, after a fire truck had been called back to the scene to wash Walker's blood from the roadside, the last transmission released the last marked car from the scene, returning the stretch of interstate to its normal purpose. - ---