CLEVELAND (WJW) – Cleveland police just released a new recording to the FOX 8 I-Team, and it reveals more about a delay getting police to the scene of a young mother who had been murdered.
This week, the I-Team revealed an internal investigation into the Cleveland police response on Huntmere after the murder of Jovon Lynch.
The new recording shows a dispatcher calling back a man who had called 911.
He had called earlier reporting violence next door overnight, but dispatch did not send officers to the scene for an hour.
During the delay, a dispatcher called back the neighbor, asking, “So, what exactly are you calling for?”
The man explained, as he did in his first call, that he saw blood on the driveway and other neighbors had reported hearing gunfire overnight. So, he was concerned about the woman next door.
The dispatcher asked, “Where’s the neighbor?”
The man responded with, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Something went on next door.”
The dispatcher then asked, “You don’t know where she is?”
And, the man answered, “No, there’s blood and stuff outside her house, and her truck is gone.”
That led the dispatcher to ask, “So, she should be in her truck, correct?”
At that point, the caller explained again, “I think something bad happened next door. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s why I called the police to come and do a wellness check on this young lady.”
Police ultimately found the woman dead there in a vehicle. The internal investigation focuses on two workers in dispatch.
The suspect turned himself in days later. Joshua Lynch sits in jail. He has demanded a hearing in court next week on his initial charges, but the case will likely go to a grand jury before then for more charges.
Police determined the woman was shot in front of her young child.
The chief’s office told us earlier that the call was first labelled a lower priority for “suspicious activity.”
We reached out to the victim’s sister.
“Cleveland’s got to do better. I will say the detective, though, he’s been doing a really great job keeping me updated. A police force isn’t just one detective, so they need to do something about their police services,” Marsita Ferguson said.
Police say, after the shooting, Joshua Lynch took the child with him and left the scene. They say he ended up giving the child to a relative.
The victim’s sister says no matter what happened with witnesses not initially reporting gunshots and with the delayed police response, the suspect deserves the blame.
“It’s not their fault this happened. It’s JR’s. The responsibility falls on him,” Ferguson said.