Dispatcher’s work honored Employee fielded tragic call

BELFAST – Police Dispatcher Misty D. Bragdon was in the middle of a routine day shift when terror called.

By the time her anxious 15 minutes on the telephone was over, a young woman had been shot dead and her assailant lay dead beside her from a self-inflicted wound.

Throughout the ordeal, Bragdon kept a cool head and the phone lines open. Her quick thinking when confronted with that day’s crisis was recognized by the Maine Chiefs of Police Association at its annual awards banquet in South Portland earlier this month.

Bragdon, 24, of Searsport was selected as one of the recipients of the association’s “Outstanding Contribution to Law Enforcement” for the year 2000. All told, 14 individuals were honored at the association’s banquet.

The annual chiefs award is given to public servants who have performed a highly credible accomplishment and bring acclaim to their department or profession as a result of their devotion to duty and the public.

“It’s a wonderful honor, and I’m very proud,” Bragdon said last week. “I don’t think I should have gotten it. I was just doing my job.”

Bragdon’s humility did not square well with city Police Chief Allen Weaver.

Weaver, who nominated Bragdon for the award, said her performance was exemplary throughout the situation and that she was well deserving of the recognition. He noted that Bragdon was confronted with providing dispatching information to two separate police agencies during the 17 minutes she was on the line with the victim’s sister.

“I thought she did a tremendous job,” said Weaver. “I felt she deserved to be recognized even though she didn’t think so. I thought she held up very well under the stress of the call. The woman she was talking to was frantic; you could hear the yelling and the shooting. To do exactly what your are supposed to do in that situation is something.”

The 911 call came at 9 a.m. July 1 from the neighboring town of Swanville. Although the jurisdiction of the Waldo County Sheriff’s Department, the call reached Belfast dispatch because the two communities share the same 338 exchange.

On the line was a distraught Roxanna Shepherd shouting that a man with a gun was trying to enter the house from the cellar. The man, John “Marty” Johnston, 47, of Argyle was a former boyfriend of Shepherd’s sister Brenda Gray-Knost, 37, the owner of the house.

Johnston was under a court order to keep away from Gray-Knost and had broken into the cellar during the night, hiding there until the household awakened.

When Shepherd went to the cellar for laundry she noticed Johnston and fled upstairs with him at her heels. At the time of the call, the sisters had managed to pin Johnson’s hand in the cellar door but he eventually shot his way into the kitchen and confronted Gray-Knost.

Gray-Knost’s 11-year-old daughter, Crystal, put herself between her mother and Johnson and remained in the room with them while Shepherd provided dispatcher Bragdon with details of the confrontation.

Fearing that she might lose contact with Shepherd if she put her on hold while she notified the sheriff’s office, Bragdon called to Belfast officer Howard Dakin for assistance. Dakin connected with the sheriff’s office from another phone and relayed its dispatcher the information supplied by Bragdon. Within seconds, Belfast police Officer Ken Fitzjurls and Deputy Sheriff Dale Brown were dispatched to the scene.

All the time she was on the line with Shepherd, Bragdon could hear an angry Johnston shouting and threatening Gray-Knost. Moments before the police arrived, Johnston shot Gray-Knost, then shot himself. Shepherd was on the line with Bragdon throughout the ordeal, describing the scene and how Crystal tried to revive her mother by performing CPR.

“It felt like forever,” Bragdon replied when asked to recall that 911 call. “I was just trying to calm her down and trying to get all the information so that Waldo [Sheriff’s Department] would know who was in the house and how they were. [Shepherd] was holding it together pretty good for what was going on. She was hysterical, of course, but I think she held it together considering the situation. I just stayed on the line with her the whole time. I tried to get her to get the little girl to a safe place, but she wouldn’t leave her mother’s side.

“It was stressful because it was in Swanville,” Bragdon said. “If it had been in Belfast, officers would have been there in minutes. But out there, that was the stressful thing. You don’t know when you’re going to get there.”

Bragdon got involved in dispatching through a course at the Waldo Technical Center that led to her job shadowing at the Police Department as well as with probation and parole officers.

After working a few months as a part-time dispatcher, she advanced to a full-time position in May 1999. She is one of four city dispatchers who will transfer to the new Waldo County Regional Communications Center when it opens later this year.