Hours before morning alarms rang to wake people up Tuesday morning, the sound of gunshots ripped through the early dawn hours.
“Shots fired! Shots fired! Send units!” radio traffickers said to responding deputies.
Wake County sheriff’s deputies opened fire when 32-year-old Brian Jacob Monroe, armed with a handgun, came to his door.
Deputies were under the impression Monroe was suicidal. However, deputies were looking for a 22-year-old man who lived in the same home. Investigators said the 22-year-old man is Monroe’s stepson.
A call came in shortly before to a suicide crisis hotline. On the other end, the 22-year-old man was looking for help.
“Complainant is a crisis line,” radio traffic bellowed to the responding deputies.
A crisis line can mean so much more to people who use it.
“A lot of times, we just call it the lifeline,” said Kelly Crosbie, the director of mental health for the North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services [DHHS].
Crosbie oversees the state’s crisis hotline, 988. It’s a number utilized hundreds of times each day by people in need of guidance. Crosbie said, in less than 10% of those calls, someone is thinking about harming themselves. Crosbie said on even fewer do they dispatch law enforcement.
“That’s incredibly rare,” Crosbie said. “That’s less than 1%.”
In the last 12 months, DHHS data shows they received 137,319 calls, chats or texts to the 988 crisis line. In 471 instances, they made the call to 911 to bring in law enforcement.
“Think about why you call law enforcement,” Crosbie said. “They are there for public safety protection and to enforce laws.”
The State Bureau of Investigation [SBI] said the 22-year-old called a suicide hotline, but it is not clear if he called 988 or another unaffiliated crisis hotline.
Alternatively, 8,450 times an unarmed mobile crisis team was sent to respond.
“Our mobile crisis teams are trained crisis responders,” Crosbie said. “They actually have the authority and the training to go and respond to an individual who may feel like they don’t want to be here anymore
or maybe contemplating harming themselves.”
Crosbie says if the crisis hotline operators are able to determine a caller has access to a weapon, they will call for law enforcement. But they will also get called in if the threat of harming themselves seems more urgent and immediate.
“People do have thoughts of not wanting to be here anymore or harming themselves,” Crosbie said. “That’s one thing. But having a plan is another and then, having the means or a method or being in an unsafe situation or space, there are levels of urgency.”
It’s a program Crosbie says has proven very successful. She says the human connection can often help bring a person back from the negative thoughts they’re having. It’s a full team approach between the crisis hotline operators, 911 and occasionally law enforcement.
“Our law enforcement folks are absolutely phenomenal,” Crosbie said. “But for some people, it’s a lot more distressing. When you’ve got a 14-year-old child and law enforcement shows up, they’re not trained mental health clinicians. They can transport you to the hospital, but you’ll go in the police car, potentially, and that can be really traumatic. In fact, it could discourage the person from calling again.”
The SBI is still investigating what happened.
In addition to knowing the 22-year-old called a crisis hotline, dispatchers told deputies they should expect a “male subject” who called in advising he was going to jump of something. The radio traffic isn’t
clear as to what his plans were.
The 22-year-old’s mother showed WRAL News her Ring doorbell surveillance footage of the incident. It appears Wake County deputies arrive without any flashing lights and knock on her door three times. It was 1:44 a.m. when they first rang the bell.
She said they never announced it was them and they were shining lights in the home making it impossible for her to see who it was on the doorbell video or at the door. She says Monroe, who is her husband, sprung from their bed and grabbed his gun, ready to defend their home.
In the video, Monroe opens the door with his gun in hand. Within seconds, deputies are heard shouting at him to put the gun down and they begin shooting. Monroe was struck in the leg, stomach and arm. He was taken to the hospital with critical injuries but his wife says doctors are optimistic he
will make a full recovery.
It’s an incident that is extremely rare, and Crosbie hopes people will not let this deter them from calling 988 if they’re in need of help.
“We have people who have called the line and had planned on hurting themselves,” Crosbie said. “But we didn’t’ need law enforcement or even the mobile crisis team. Sometimes, we are able to just get them an outpatient appointment with the clinician. It shows the effectiveness of the line.”
While it’s unknown if the 22-year-old contacted 988 or another unaffiliated crisis hotline, Crosbie says they will absolutely review what happened if he called them.
“We will absolutely follow up on exactly what happened,” Crosbie said. “If they reached out to us, if we did hand it off, and then what these steps were that happened.”
If you’re having suicidal thoughts or a mental health crisis, call or text 988 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. Veterans can press “1” after dialing 988 to connect directly to the Veterans Crisis Lifeline. For texts, veterans should continue to text the Veterans Crisis Lifeline short code: 838255.