Husband of murdered Oregon woman sues Lucas County 911

OREGON, Ohio (WTVG) - In December 2021 Johey Crawford was murdered by the father of her granddaughter and the little girl was kidnapped.

Now her husband is suing three dispatchers, the killer and Lucas County 911 because he says there were errors that delayed police response to his Oregon home.

The lawsuit says that Crawford herself called 911 the day before her murder because she was worried about her life. The suit says this means they had her address and the murderer’s name on record.

Minutes before Crawford was murdered, Stevenson Hicks placed a 911 call saying his cousin was about to kill Crawford, but he only knew the street name and not her exact address.

The suit alleges the dispatcher ended up putting Hicks on hold and did not contact any other law enforcement of the situation.

Hicks called 911 again, but according to the lawsuit, the dispatchers were more interested in getting his information than preventing a homicide.

“You would logically think at that point the system would have something built up that would hit within the last 24 hours and work the computer to figure out where it’s at. That didn’t happen,” says Crawford’s husband Knute Huber.

The lawsuit says if the proper policy was followed and the proper people notified, police would have had almost seven minutes to stop the killer.

Huber says there needs to be a better system in place for Lucas County 911.

“Our system is broken,” says Huber. “We have an opportunity through the death of my wife to change it, and I want to use it that way.”

Huber has ideas on how it can be changed.

“To develop a 911 system that the Lucas County residents had input about. I think the answer would have been how about putting 5 more million in instead of taking 5 more million out. But no one asked us.”

More than that, Huber says he hopes to prevent something like this from happening again and to inspire others to do the same.

“I’m hoping that I can become that voice that people can say I’d like to follow that guy. There may be a leader listening to me right now that says I want to be that person to take on that cross, and that’s the only way it’s going to change,” says Huber.

13abc has reached out to Lucas County 911 for a comment multiple times but have not yet heard back from them.

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