City police released them today, and you can listen here.
The first-impression things being reported include (I’m quoting Adam Beam’s Tweets here, although I’m seeing similar observations at the WACH-Fox site:
- “A witness told the 911 dispatcher that ‘one guy didn’t have his lights on'”
- “Steve Benjamin also calls 911, and at the beginning of his call you can hear someone say ‘I know I had a green light'”
- “Benjamin asks to ‘send someone quickly’ several times. He also says ‘It’s going to be OK’ several times”
So, to sum it up in three words: “Muddled. Murky. Incomplete.”
Which is what you tend to get with raw intel.
I liked Noelle Phillips’s detailed piece today on the sorts of forensics the experts employ, including the bit about how the filament of a lit headlamp breaks up differently from a cold, unlit one.
I will also say that, having had two German cars and a Swedish one that were otherwise delightful, electrical problems are annoyingly common. Steve could have thought his lights were on, when they actually were not.
Ah, the tials and tribulations of the elite.
I drove a 1979 base model 244 Volvo until 1998, then much later I bought a used 99 VW Jetta, and then, feeling very flush, an 8-year-old BMZ Z3 (locally grown!). I sold the Z3 after about a year because it was too expensive to maintain….we still have the 99 Jetta.
And wrecks happen to everyone. We don’t know from the 911 tapes whose lights were allegedly not on. There is security tape from earlier showing Benjamin’s lights on. Whether they remained on, is not known…
I think I’ve missed something. Did the 911 caller identify which car didn’t have lights or has everyone assumed it was Benjamin because she said “one guy”? I read some discussion about his car that led me to think it may have running lights that are on all the time. If the 911 caller couldn’t see who was in the vehicles at the time, could she have been referring to the older car?
The Mercedes has automatic lights. Whether they were working at the time…
I think you may be right–the “guy” may have been the woman.