Posted on 04/13/2006 3:21:02 PM PDT by ghost of nixon
DURHAM, N.C. -- A woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by members of Duke University's lacrosse team was described as "just passed-out drunk" by one of the first police officers to see her, according to a recording of radio traffic released by Durham police on Thursday and obtained by The Associated Press.
The conversation between the officer and a police dispatcher took place about 1:30 a.m. March 14, about five minutes after a grocery store security guard called 911 to report a woman in the parking lot who would not get out of someone else's car.
The officer gave the dispatcher the police code for an intoxicated person and said the woman was unconscious. When asked whether she needed medical help, the officer said: "She's breathing and appears to be fine. She's not in distress. She's just passed-out drunk."
The black woman, a 27-year-old dancer and college student, told police she was sexually assaulted and beaten by three white men around midnight at an off-campus party thrown by Duke's lacrosse team. The racially charged allegations have led Duke to cancel the highly ranked team's season and accept the resignation of its coach.
No charges have been filed, but district attorney Mike Nifong has said he believes a crime was committed. Attorneys for the players have said DNA tests failed to connect any players to the alleged attack, and they have urged Nifong to drop his investigation.
The radio recordings, obtained by the AP through a records request, are the first instance in which police or anyone connected with the investigation has said the woman appeared to be intoxicated.
Defense lawyers, however, have said time-stamped photographs taken by the players show that the accuser was drunk and had already suffered some injuries when she arrived at the house for the party.
The recording is consistent with "what I have seen of the photo evidence before," attorney Kerry Sutton said. Those photos, she said, showed that she was "way beyond where you would put somebody behind the wheel of a car."
The description of the woman's medical exam -- which Nifong has said is his basis for believing a rape occurred -- does not mention her being drunk. It states only that the woman's injuries and behavior were consistent with having been raped, sexually assaulted and having suffered a traumatic experience.
The woman has told police she and another dancer hired to dance at the party arrived at 11:30 p.m. March 13. The pair reportedly left the house a short time later, fearing for their safety. The accuser told police the two were coaxed back into the house with an apology, at which point they were separated. That's when she said she was dragged into a bathroom and sexually assaulted, beaten and choked for a half-hour.
At 12:53 a.m., police received a 911 call from a woman complaining that she had been called racial slurs by white men gathered outside the home where the party took place.
The defense has said it believes the second dancer at the party made that call. The 911 call from the grocery store security guard was placed at 1:22 a.m.
In it, the caller says, "Um, the problem is ... it's a lady in somebody else's car and she will not get out of their car. She's like, she's like intoxicated, drunk or something. She's, I mean, she won't get out of the car, period."
A police spokeswoman did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the radio traffic.
The case has focused intense national scrutiny on Duke and the lacrosse players and has sparked protests on the elite private university's campus and elsewhere in Durham. The school last week canceled the highly ranked team's season and coach Mike Pressler resigned after the release of a vulgar and graphic e-mail sent by a team member shortly after the alleged assault.
Several of the defense attorneys say they expect the district attorney to ask a grand jury on Monday to issue charges in connection with allegations.
"Rest up on Sunday," Sutton said.
There has been no official word, however, on whether Nifong intends to present the allegations Monday. His next opportunity would come two weeks later.
Lots of speculation out there.
Some say that the guys were upset because they were black and didn't want to pay them. But they have pictures of them dancing.
But I thought it was established that she was examined the early morning following the party?
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=2404866
In the ESPN story above, the hospital person refers to a "red nightgown." That may in fact be the red negligee, but the hospital person simply didn't choose his/her words carefully.
Also, the code designation was changed to "Rape" within one hour of the first police contact at Kroger, so I'm not sure they necessarily actually took her to the drunk tank or to the police station at all.
It probably took a while after the police get to Kroger at 1:30 to talk to the security guard, talk to Kim, try to convince the accuser to get out of the car, etc., before they finally decided to physically unload her from Kim's car and load her into the back of the police car. It may have been there, in the police car, while still in the Kroger lot, when the woman realized that she was being arrested for something, that she claimed she was raped. At this time she is awake enough to remember her boyfriend's phone number, and ask police to call him for her (she had left her cellphone at the house)(or maybe Kim was still around and called the boyfriend for her). The boyfriend then comes to the Kroger lot. Another freeper posted on the other long thread that on the Dan Abrams show, two guests said that it was the boyfriend who took her to the hospital. I'd like a better source for that, but apparently either the police together with the boyfriend or the boyfriend alone took her to the hospital. It may be that once she cried "rape" the police attitude changed completely and they were okay with letting her boyfriend take her on the promise of taking her to the hospital.
Hospital says she was beat up, students have a picture showing her with cuts and bruises but cop says she is fine?
WTF
It was late when she arrived at the players house. She could have had sex with three are four guys by the time she arrived at the player's house. Where was the other girl while all of this was supposedly taking place?
I presume that if defense lawyers have spoken to Kim, they certainly must have covered every minute of their encounter.
Agree they must have tried to ask her about this, but I've seen nothing on what she might have told them as to the time in the bathroom in any of the news reports.
Loco also names the accuser ("Mangum"). I don't know where that is coming from, or, for that matter, some of the other information in the post. That is, I am not sure where facts end and speculation begins.
But even Dan Abrams said today that there is some "discrepancy" about when she arrived at the hospital.
Where did the red robe come from?
Why did a lawyer on Abrams show on April 6th say her boy friend took her to the hospital.
Why haven't we heard anybody say the police took her.
Her dad (in one of his versions) said she called him at 8 a.m. from the hospital. And he said she came to his house at 11 a.m. to drop off her car because "she didn't want to drive it for a while."
Didn't the SI article say she was there five hours?
And isn't the chain of custody broken?
LOL! Why yes it is.
Why did that get moved to chat?
And they found her name way back on that thread about her father finding out she was the girl from the reporter........long, long ago.
It is hard to believe that the police would let her out of their custody to a male friend if she was claiming rape at that point. That would completely undermine the criminal case and there would also be some liability for them in releasing her to a private person for transport to a medical facility once she was in custody, with custody occurring at the point they identified her as drunk and passed out. I don't know how NC LE operates, but that would not happen in CA. Maybe they let her call the BF to meet her at the hospital, but people aren't bounced in and out of custody like that, especially when the person is a victim of violence.
Read down from here, please.
LOL>......well, how if they let her go to the hospital with the BF, how the HECK can Nifong be sure who did what to her?
Maybe they were doing some kind of candy in the bathroom so the defense lawyers agreed to keep that part out of the public story for now. It's just a thought.
Agree, but I don't exclude from the various possibilities that the Durham PD didn't necessarily adhere to proper police procedures. They may well have, but perhaps they did not.
Considering her out of it condition and, according to the cop's not smelling any alcohol, drug dogs should have been used to sniff her purse.
<< Looks like the [Soon to be former] DA's case is really falling apart. >>
That class-warring assinine anally-retentive racist dickhead "Democrat" apparatchik is a pretty clear if awful look at all that's wrong with the nation's more than a million culturally communist "Democrat" lawyers, prosecutors and "judges."
As are the packs of even pettier press parsers picking parrot-like at their PCs and promulgating his class-war driven 'get-whitey' lies from coast to coast.
possibly. I was speculating the other day about what might have happened in the bathroom
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1612145/posts?page=222#222
WOW. If Durham PD released her to her BF, when she was already in their custody, which she was, instead of directly to medical, Nifong is even more desperate than even I imagined. This is a HUGE problem with his case, if true.
How do you get a 27 year old with two kids (this is not a 13 year old innocent, eh?) drunk against her will?
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