911 call: Ohio girl, 8, witnesses mother's murder

911 call shows northwest Ohio girl, 8, witnessed her mother's fatal stabbing

7/17/2013

KENTON, Ohio — Recordings of 911 calls captured the last moments of an Ohio woman and the panic of the 8-year-old girl who witnessed her mother’s fatal stabbing and the suicide of the man who killed her.

In a call fielded Tuesday by the Hardin County Sheriff’s Office in northwest Ohio, Teresa Nelson reported that her ex-boyfriend, Justin Manns, was banging on her door and threatening to kill himself on her porch. She is heard telling him: “You literally scare me.”

The dispatcher told Nelson officers were on the way, but about five minutes into the call Mann broke into the house. Nelson, 28, is heard telling her 8-year-old daughter to go into another room.

“He’s kicking in my door!” Nelson told the dispatcher before she began screaming. “Oh my god, he’s got me by the hair! He stabbed me! ... He’s stabbing me!”

The call disconnected during the attack. Shortly after, the dispatcher called back and got Nelson’s daughter. She was hiding in the bedroom with her grandmother.

“He stabbed her,” the crying girl told the dispatcher. “I’m scared.”

The girl clearly answers questions from the dispatcher, who tells her help is on the way.

“Are they almost here?” she asked. “Will you pick me up?”

The sheriff’s office said the girl is now safe with relatives.

“Children’s services is helping us see that she gets whatever she needs,” Hardin County Sheriff Keith Everhart told The Columbus Dispatch.