“Hi, I have a young lady at my house right now and she says her name is Jayme Closs,” Kristin Kasinskas told the dispatcher.
Jayme, 13, escaped from the home of alleged captor Jake Patterson on Jan. 10 and found Joanne Nutter, a retired social worker, walking her dog nearby.
“He killed my parents. I want to go home. Help me,” Jayme told Nutter.
“I was walking my dog and we were almost home and she’s walking toward me crying saying, ‘You gotta help me, you gotta help me,’” Nutter told the dispatcher. “And I didn’t want to go into my cabin because it’s too close to Patterson’s house.”
“His name is Jake Thomas Patterson and apparently his house is two doors down from our cabin [...] So we’re kind of scared because he might come.”
Pullen said that officers were on their way to the scene but stayed on the line until they reached the house, about 30 minutes in total.
She urged Kasinskas to lock all the doors and stay inside while Nutter asked Closs several questions about Patterson, who was soon found driving nearby.
Jayme was rushed to a hospital and released after doctors concluded she was physically fine and FBI agents questioned her. She was reunited with her family on Jan. 11.
911 Dispatcher Recounts Call
Pullen said that the call was one of the most intense that she’s received in the decade that she’s worked as a dispatcher.She said she immediately sent officers to the house while trying to find out more information about Patterson so she could convey information to them and help in finding him.
“The sound of her voice, I knew something was different about this and I remember looking at my partner that day and she said, ‘Is this legitimate?’ And I said, “‘I think it is.’ You have that gut feeling, you can hear it in her voice, you just kind of knew,” she said. She also wanted the teenager to know that she was safe and that help was on the way.
About 30 minutes after the call came in, it was over. Jayme was safe and Patterson was in custody. Pullen put her head down on her desk, relieved.
“You can’t put into words what a great feeling it is,“ she said. ”Then you think of what this poor girl has gone through and her next day is coming ... all I can think about is her.”