Graham says help arrived earlier for beating victim
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
March 6, 2009
A D.C. councilman is disputing reports that a homeless man lay severely beaten on a Columbia Heights street on a late January evening for nearly 20 minutes before anyone offered to help or call 911.
According to his office’s review of a widely seen surveillance video of the Jan. 27 incident, several people came to the aid of Jose Sanchez after he was assaulted and fell to the ground at 5:21 p.m. at the corner of Parkwood Place and 14th Street, Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham said Thursday. It appears one person tried to stabilize his head with a shoe, said Graham, who represents Columbia Heights; another person may have tried to pick him up.
Sanchez was attended to by passers-by until 5:29, Graham said. And during those first few minutes, he said, an undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrant claims to have called 911 from his cell phone, though the Office of Unified Communications has no record of the call.
“The short of it is that he was left unattended for only three to four minutes,” Graham said. “We believe based on the information that it was a very short time, and all of that national bad publicity was groundless.”
He added: “We believe there was a call all in Spanish.”
The surveillance tape, which drew national attention and scorn for Columbia Heights, seems to show more than 160 people passed Sanchez until the ambulance arrived at 5:38.
The first of two emergency calls on the incident was answered at 5:32 p.m., according to Janice Quintana, chief of the District’s 911 call center. The caller reported a man “lying down in the street,” Quintana said, but the operator couldn’t understand where. Two minutes passed before the call was directed to a Spanish-speaking operator, who dispatched an ambulance at 5:36.
A second call, received at 5:36, reported Sanchez was knocked out “but is breathing and may have been assaulted and that a lot of people are standing around but that no one is doing anything,” Quintana told Graham and Councilman Phil Mendelson, chairman of the public safety committee.
“We did not find any other calls that came in,” Quintana said Wednesday during a council committee hearing.
Sanchez, 31, died from brain injuries three days later. Two men have been charged in the attack. The incident has spurred a “Call 911” campaign aimed at immigrants who may be afraid of calling the authorities.
