Lieutenant Dave Messmore
speaker
139 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard May 2025
Lieutenant Dave Messmore’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I'm trying to figure out what's coming.
There was a ton of pressure. The mayor would show up at fires, the police chief is calling, the fire chief's calling, the media was calling constantly. We were working all the time around the clock.
At the time, this was a, in our opinion, an unethical and unprofessional, and this was like breaking all the rules.
— Somebody brought in some copies and we were all reading it in the station.
— Oh, it was anger. Anger at James Hibbard, anger at the New Times. They're celebrating and sensationalizing a criminal.
We really thought at the time, the more this continued, somebody was going to get hurt and possibly killed.
There's a lot of things we wanted to know.
When did he first contact you? On what phone number? Have you had any prior contact with him? What did he tell you? Did you know anything about the fire the night before? Did you know what was going to happen? All those things.
We're like, well, you want to get people hurt? You're going to let somebody get hurt before we figure out who he is?
We actually had eyes on him, and he was in his home.
That's another kick in the gut.
We were scared. We were scared for the community or scared what was going to happen.
The more this continued, somebody was going to get hurt and possibly killed. Firefighters were in danger. When firefighters go in to fight these fires, they have no idea if there's a basement even on some of these homes.
If there is a basement, they could be on a floor that collapses during a fire.
We really felt like we're losing control of this thing.
You know, I don't know. We were also in a bad spot at that point. You know, we couldn't get ahead of this thing. We needed more resources. I knew we needed more resources. We were trying.
He came, we stood at the car, and we literally shook hands and agreed how we would work this thing over the trunk of a car in the middle of the night.
Within a couple weeks, we had swelled from 10 to 15 people working on it to about 40 or 50.
I didn't have the experience to do what I was doing, quite honestly.
We got tips all the time, constantly.
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