A woman who killed her disabled daughter and was then fatally shot by police officers told her son she was God and would bring him and his sister back to life if they died, the woman's brother told a 911 operator in a frantic call for help on Monday.
The brother, James Farmer, had gone next door to call for help, apparently because he had a cellphone with a number that would not automatically connect to Atlanta’s 911 system. When he left the house, Carulus Hines locked the doors and then threw her 8-year-old son out a window.
According to the tape released Wednesday, Farmer said Hines was in a “frame of mind” and she “needs to be taken away and checked out.”
When police got to the rental house on Abner Place in northwest Atlanta, they found Carulus Hines sitting in a chair, holding her 4-year-old daughter in one arm and stabbing her with the other. Police said Hines also had wrapped her daughter's face with tape. The medical examiner said Nalecia Hines died of asphyxiation and multiple stab wounds. Nalecia had Down syndrome, according to neighbors.
"My sister is like in another frame of mind," Farmer said. "She threw my nephew out the window, and he said she choked her daughter out. She's proclaiming she's God and ‘I'll bring ‘em back if I take ‘em out.'
"Look, she choked my niece out -- she might be dead in there. She's [Hines] out of her mind," Farmer said, growing frustrated with the operator's questions.
"Be assured that help is already on the way," the operator told Farmer.
Farmer told the operator his 40-year-old sister was healthy, stood more more than 6 feet tall and weighed 300 pounds.
When he left the house to call for help, she was naked, Farmer said. When police arrived, however, she had put on a T-shirt and pajama bottoms, according to Maj. Keith Meadows.
Farmer said he was looking for a sledgehammer so he could break down the locked door.
"I don't want to hurt her, but she's in a frame of mind where she needs restraint of some kind," Farmer said. "She's in the house with her [the 4-year-old girl]. I couldn't get her out of the house.
"She [Hines] was acting that crazy this morning," Farmer said.
Meadows said as many as 16 shots were fired by two officers who crashed their way into Hines' living room Monday afternoon. None of those shots hit the little girl, according to an autopsy report by the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office.
Police spokesman Carlos Campos said an investigation was continuing even though the primary suspect is dead.
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