Sandy MaloneWest Olive, MI – A 25-year-old man who has been charged with the murder of his father called 911 for help an hour before his father died, but the call never got sent from dispatch to deputies.
Kenneth Boone first called 911 and asked for help at a home on Pawnee Drive in the North Holiday Hills area at about 6:15 a.m. on Dec. 1, WZZM reported.
The Ottawa County Central Dispatch Authority confirmed on Monday that Boone had talked to a dispatcher when he called.
However, that call for help never made to sheriff’s deputies, WZZM reported.
Boone called 911 again at about 7:24 a.m. and told the dispatcher that he had hurt his father and needed help.
Ottawa County sheriff’s deputies responded to his second 911 call and found his father, 64-year-old James Boone, beaten to death inside his home in Spring Lake Township, WZZM reported.
Kenneth Boone was walking down a street in the neighborhood when police found him and took him into custody shortly after the encountered his father’s dead body.
The probable cause affidavit said Kenneth Boone was carrying a bloody hammer and was covered in blood, according to WZZM.
The dispatch authority said that the initial 911 call was logged into their system and referred for dispatch to deputies via their computer-aided dispatch system, but that the call was never actually given to deputies.
“A call was created in the OCCDA computer aided dispatch system but was not dispatched or communicated to deputies in the field,” Ottawa County Central Dispatch Authority Peter McWatters wrote in an email to MLive.com.
McWatters said an investigation was underway to determine what happened to the initial call, and whether it was human or computer error.
He said they needed to investigate whether “call handling and dispatch protocols were followed,” he wrote.
McWatters told WOOD that no “intentional misconduct” had occurred in the dispatch center during the incident.
Kenneth Boone has a history of mental illness and had been hospitalized shortly before he beat his father to death.
Court documents showed he was committed to the psychiatric unit of a local hospital after he tried to kill himself on Nov. 8, and then released into a residential facility, WOOD reported.
The petition James Boone filed in probate court revealed that Kenneth Boone had threatened to “kill people for their body parts” and had been hearing voices.
The Michigan Department of Corrections had also filed a petition in Ottawa County seeking mental health treatment for Kenneth Boone after he was convicted of car theft, WOOD reported.
Medical professionals who interviewed him at the time said Kenneth Boone was a registered sex offender who had a “history of violent and suicidal behaviors.”
According to doctors at the Richard A Hanlon Correction Facility in Ionia, Kenneth Boone was delusional, claimed he heard voices, and was not medication compliant, even though the medication helped with his condition, WOOD reported that Boone was released from prison on that conviction on Feb. 10.
Kenneth Boone is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 17, WZZM reported.