W. HTFD police delay on 911 call

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) - West Hartford's Police Chief is talking about his department's delayed response to a 9-1-1 call that is linked to a shooting incident that occurred earlier in the week of Mar.27.

Before that shooting went down, a woman called police saying, bullies had shown up to bother her daughter.

Before police swarmed the scene, and before the shot was fired, Quintina Texidor called 9-1-1 about a group of teens harassing her daughter.

"Now they are bringing boys walking by my house, and threatening us. They say they are going to swing by and air out my house. I'm going to make a report because this is going to escalate," says Quintina Texidor.

the department responded by saying someone would be there shortly.

By air-out Texidor meant gunshots. Later, seeing no police, she called again.

I called about an hour ago, or more, and still there is not a patrol cruiser here "Where?" and the problem has escalated," says Texidor.

By this point, police were on their way to 113 Abbotsford Avenue, but not before a 17-year-old allegedly opened fire, hitting Texidor's family member in the neck.

"Obviously we were not on our best game on this one. We pride ourselves on prompt response, our citizens have come to rely on that, and 99 out of 100 you call the cops, you are going to have somebody there quickly. This time it didn't work. Sorry for that," says Police Chief, James Strillacci.

Strillacci is not shying away from addressing the issue. In fact, he says he was unaware of the delay when he was on scene. Now, he's checking into what happened, why it happened, and how it can be avoided in the future.

"We were surprised to find out there was a delay. Certainly it's unfortunate, it takes away from the underlying issue, that you have a teenage kid with a gun that shoots somebody," says Strillacci. "I can't fix what happened. I'm going to try to fix what's going to happen."

The chief is looking into other calls that might have been going on during the first call. He says the special investigations unit is handling this investigation.