How one telecommunicator transformed the pain of a mass shooting into a purpose to help others.
By Chris Laymon
It is just over an hour and a half into a Saturday shift at Allen Communications in the Allen, Texas, Police Department when a voice comes over the main police channel: “I think we got shots fired at the outlet mall.”
The public safety telecommunicator at console two acknowledges this calmly and professionally and sends backup to the location. This radio traffic grabs everyone’s attention. Is it the echo of gunshots from nearby? Could it be a car backfiring in the parking lot? A parking dispute gone terribly wrong? We brace for the worst while hoping for the best.
Within moments, everything is in motion. I wait for a new call to open, but nothing shows up on my screen as the initial call notes are being added to the suspicious circumstances from earlier. I open a “shooting” call at the mall; CAD automatically dispatches the fire department, and we now have a clean slate for notes that will soon fill the screen.
At nearly the same time, the officer on scene can be heard behind me, saying, “We got a mass shooter.” My heart drops. The phones start ringing. Our phone system has a distinct ring for 9-1-1 calls, a separate one for non-emergency calls and a third that plays when a 9-1-1 caller disconnects before we can answer the line. These three sounds fill the air in the emergency communications center (ECC) for the next several hours without end. I spot another telecommunicator outside the door and motion frantically for them to come back in. I make eye contact and say, “mass shooting at the mall” — the only words I can get out before answering the phone. Their eyes widen, and they run to their console.
MANAGED CHAOS
As trained and experienced telecommunicators, we’re used to busy days. Phones ring every few minutes, traffic stops occur regularly, and officers are placed on calls before they can finish the paperwork from the last ones. Fire units crisscross the city so often that they barely see their stations. I have had busy days throughout the years, most of which barely register in my memory. But May 6, 2023, was different. On a normal busy day, you answer a call, take notes, send help, hang up and wait for the next one. That is the typical workflow for a telecommunicator.
On May 6, that crucial last step — waiting for the next one — never came. Calls poured in endlessly.
Throughout my career, I have tried to let calls end naturally. It was part of the customer service that telecommunicators provide to the public. But that day, with the deluge of calls, that kind of call taking was not possible. The team found themselves having to hang up on callers who did not need immediate assistance. To this day, that aspect of the situation hangs heavily on my mind. What followed was a period of managed chaos, both in the ECC and in the field. Hundreds of phone calls came in over the next few hours. Some were from relatives in other cities and states, desperate to find loved ones. Others were from people hiding inside the mall — the injured and dying, begging for help.
Through it all, telecommunicators stood on the front lines. The single officer on scene had stopped the killing within minutes, but callers reported up to four gunmen throughout the mall complex. We later learned there was only one. The script we came up with was simple: ask if the caller was hurt, if they were with anyone who was hurt and what store they were in. We would then advise them to stay hidden and behind locked doors until officers told them to exit.
Letting go of calls with injured victims or their loved ones was far harder. I couldn’t bear to hang up when there was still a chance to help save a life. Talking a family member through CPR or telling them to apply pressure as they held someone bleeding out is gut-wrenching — but knowing you must end that call to take the next one forces you to set your emotions aside.
At some point during those opening minutes, I managed to send a message to some off-duty telecommunicators, asking them to come in and help. I will be forever grateful to those who offered their assistance. With everything taking place on scene, I decided to tell the two radio telecommunicators not to answer incoming calls so they could focus on the work that was slowly overwhelming their channels. This left just myself and one other telecommunicator to handle the flood of calls until help arrived. Whether that was the right decision could be debated, but it was the decision I made, and I stand by it. The rest of the afternoon dragged on. There is a level of busyness in an ECC that can make time go by in an instant, but we had passed that long ago and entered a place where every minute felt like an eternity. Eventually, the phone calls requiring immediate attention faded, and the calls about patient status, questions from the media and citizens asking when they could retrieve their vehicles and belongings took over.
I stayed on shift until 0200 the next morning, and then headed home exhausted, dazed and numb. To this day, I do not remember my drive home. I woke up the next morning still tired and world-weary. My wife, also a telecommunicator at Allen who had responded to my request for help earlier, had come home before me once the call load slowed. She told me that I hadn’t slept much, and when I did, I was yelling so loudly it could be heard throughout the house. I cannot say whether I was truly asleep, and I do not remember my dreams, or if my brain blocked out those memories for me.
In the days and weeks that followed, there were numerous debriefings for police, fire departments and telecommunicators to talk about the incident and how it affected them. I tried to speak my part at these, hoping it would bring some clarity or closure to what I was feeling, but it did not do much. Fortunately, the City of Allen, along with the Allen Fire Department and the Allen Police Department, recognized the importance of mental health and well-being. We were encouraged to seek help if we needed it and were told numerous times that there was a strict policy of anonymity in place. This is where my mental health journey began. I sought out help and was able to arrange a counseling session. It was an hour long, and while I was able to voice my feelings, it felt more like recounting an event to a stranger than a step toward healing. Worse yet, when I tried to schedule a follow-up, I was told that the next available time slot was in ten or more weeks away. I left disheartened and decided maybe I should bottle up my emotions and keep working through life as usual. I now realize that this is immensely unhealthy for most people, including myself, but bills have to be paid and people still need help, so back to work I went.
LINGERING EFFECTS — AND OPPORTUNITIES
For weeks after the shooting, every time the phone rang back-to-back, my heart raced. My hands shook, and I slipped into a “no emotions, just work” mode. I caught myself falling into the same script I’d used that day whenever I answered 9-1-1. Deep down, I knew I needed to do something to ease the pressure, but I pushed it aside and kept working as I had for years. I was more irritable, sleeping less — but isn’t that just life? Then, an opportunity appeared. The incident commander and the SWAT team leader, who were present at the shooting, invited me to join them as a speaker for a series of classes attended by law enforcement, fire personnel, medical teams and other first responders. As a trainer, and Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) instructor, I was accustomed to speaking in front of crowds. This felt like a good opportunity to apply what I had learned in all the years of working in this field — and the new knowledge I had acquired from the tragic shooting incident — to help others prepare should anything similar ever happen in their jurisdictions. I gladly agreed, and they gave me multiple dates to attend.
This became my outlet. Therapy hadn’t worked and was hard to schedule, and ignoring the issue only made it worse. Teaching gave me a way to process what happened — sharing what I saw, what I did, and what I might have done differently. I could answer questions I hadn’t considered and hear outside perspectives on my team’s actions that day. In those classes, I finally felt relief. What we had endured now had purpose. While I still had some sleepless nights, that outlet let me return to life as it was — no more sudden anxiety, no more sleep-screaming, no more standing on edge through a shift.
If I could leave others with one piece of knowledge, it would be this: it is OK not to be OK. Telecommunicators carry the weight of the people we serve, whether we intend to or not. Sometimes that shows up as irritability, silence or just not wanting to come to work. All of those feelings are valid. Acknowledging that something is wrong is the first step. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can come from phone and radio interactions just as it can from witnessing horror in person. The mind’s eye can be just as brutal.
As a field, we need to recognize that and do more for one another. High-stress, critical incidents aren’t going away — and neither are we. Let’s hold the line together.
Chris Laymon, ENP, is Radio Systems Specialist at the McKinney (Texas) Police Department.
