Newly released body camera footage taken less than 12 hours before Carrie Zettel was found dead in her backyard captures the final time Zettel tells officers she is afraid of her daughter and pleads with them to take her daughter to receive mental health resources.
According to body camera footage from Oct. 12, Zettel, 64, is heard repeatedly telling Milwaukee police officers she is afraid of her daughter, 29-year-old Lauren Spors. For that reason, Zettel asks officers to take her daughter from her house.
“My poor baby, and I’m afraid of her,” Zettel is heard telling officers, before asking them to take Spors somewhere.
Milwaukee Police Department redacted portions of the audio footage each time Zettel begins discussing possible relocation options. Previous reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and records from other police departments indicate Zettel was likely asking the police to take Spors to a mental health hospital, as various police departments had in the past.
Instead, officers convince Zettel to take Spors to a hotel.
Roughly 10 hours after leaving Zettel’s home around 4:30 a.m. on Oct. 12, officers would return to find Zettel dead in the backyard. Spors now is facing a first-degree homicide charge in connection to her mother’s death.
Spors, who was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in her late teens, experiences hallucinations and has been violent toward her mother over the years.
Cases like Spors are rare. Studies show people with mental illnesses are more commonly victims instead of perpetrators of violence.
The Journal Sentinel previously reported that several Milwaukee County police departments interacted with Spors at least five times in the five days leading up to her mother’s murder. Officers responded to calls of Spors being aggressive in a park, mumbling at a convenience store and refusing to leave a hospital.
The new information shows Spors’ behavior continued to escalate in the hours before her mother’s death and raises questions about why the police did not take Spors into custody for an involuntary mental health evaluation when her mother repeatedly told officers she was afraid of her daughter and fearful for her life.
If the police had taken Spors away, either to a hospital or to jail, Zettel would still be alive, her close friend and neighbor Lorreta Moyer said after reviewing the footage.
“Carrie begged them to take her,” Moyer said.
In Wisconsin, law enforcement officers are allowed to take people who are considered an imminent danger to themselves or others to a hospital to be evaluated for an involuntary mental health commitment.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reached out to the Milwaukee Police Department with questions concerning the footage on Jan. 6. As of Jan. 22, a department spokesperson said only that it was still under review and was therefore declining to comment.
Zettel’s last interaction with police officers
The interaction between police officers, Zettel and Spors began at 3:24 a.m. on Oct. 12, when Zettel – believing someone was trying to break into her house – calls 911.
Officers arrive at Zettel’s home seven minutes later and find Spors lying under a tarp on the lawn. When they approach her, Spors tells them a pedophile is living in Zettel’s house. Spors then runs away from the officers.
Zettel tells officers that Spors often hallucinates that Zettel is a man and a pedophile, a symptom of her mental illness.
Officers determine it was Spors who was banging the window at her mother’s house. Spors had done the same thing in 2021, throwing a rock through Zettel’s windows on Christmas Day.
“She doesn’t have a place to live,” Zettel tells the officers. “She can’t live with me because she’s too violent. She tried breaking in. She tried to break the windows.”
Zettel can be heard on the footage telling officers that Spors has pushed her and threatened to kill her.
Even in a difficult situation, Zettel asked how her daughter was doing.
“Did she have warm clothes on? Did she have shoes on?” Zettel asked, explaining that she did not put Spors’ shoes in her bag when Spors was kicked out of a hotel days before.
After officers find Spors hiding, she does not respond when asked about her willingness to voluntarily receive mental health help. Officers subsequently tell her Zettel could get her a hotel room for the night.
When told of this development, Zettel can be heard sighing. She again asks if Spors can be taken somewhere else voluntarily.
“It’s expensive,” Zettel says, about taking her to a hotel. “She has hardly any money left for that situation now.”
The officer responds that it was a struggle to engage with Spors, and Zettel reluctantly agrees, according to the footage. Officers wait with Spors for 25 minutes while Zettel finds a hotel for Spors.
The footage concludes around 4:30 a.m. The next time officers are called to Zettel’s home is when she is found dead in her backyard at 2:33 p.m.
“She loved Lauren more than anything and that was the thing,” Moyer said. “Those cops pressured her so much to come get her.”
Carmen Pitre, executive director at the Sojourner Family Peace Center, said she did not have enough information to say whether the police should have considered this a domestic violence incident and arrested Spors under the mandatory arrest law.
“Every homicide is a painful tragedy for families and for our entire community,” Pitre said. “We must wrap our arms around those who are hurting and recommit ourselves to doing better and responding more effectively to prevent violence in the future.”
Spors awaiting treatment
On Nov. 21, a judge ordered Spors to receive mental health treatment so she can be competent to stand trial. In order to face trial, Spors must be able to understand the charges against her and aid in her own defense.
Her public defender, Vincent Guimont, declined to comment.
Due to the high volume of competency orders, many defendants wait in jail for months before they are taken to a hospital for treatment.
A doctor is scheduled to give the court a three-month treatment report about Spors’ progress on Feb. 27.
Eva Wen is an investigative data reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at 646-943-4271 or qwen@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Mother tells police she feared daughter hours before she was killed
Reporting by Eva Wen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
