Mom stabbed more than 20 times while her emergency call was ignored

The desperate call of a woman to the emergency number was ignored and she died within a few minutes.

Victoria Bance, 37, was murdered by her husband in cold blood for talking to a man while they were in a bar. She called the emergency number but Robert Bance managed to snatch the phone.

In the call records you can clearly hear that a struggle is happening on the other side of the line and then the call hangs up. The operator that had responded decided to return the call to find out what happened.

Robert answered the call with a calm voice and told the operator that there was no emergency, however, one could clearly hear in the background that a woman was screaming desperately, she was yelling her address.

Unfortunately, the operator did not report the call nor alert the police to what he had heard. After about four minutes, Robert called the same emergency number and confessed that he had just murdered Victoria.

When the police arrived at the scene a few minutes later, they found Victoria's body with more than 20 deep wounds made with a 17-centimeter-long knife. The forensics later determined that any of the stab wounds would have been life-threatening.

Robert was under the influence of alcohol the night of the attack. According to the reports, that night he was with Victoria in a bar and saw her chatting with another guy which provoked an attack of anger. So he took his things and left the place leaving his wife without phone or money to return home.

While Victoria managed to return home, Robert waited patiently for her. The murder weapon had been a gift that Robert's father had received for his years of service, a 42 Commando Royal Marines knife of 17 cm long.

Robert received a life sentence for the murder of Victoria after the judge determined that the crime had been committed in cold rage, as the defendant deliberately lied to the emergency operator and subsequently murdered his wife.

The defendant could have stopped at that moment but decided to convince the call handler that nothing was happening and then attacked Victoria wildly.

This case of negligence on the part of the operators of the emergency call service reminds us of another crime that could have been avoided if the person who received the alert call had done his job.

The mother of a 15-year-old teenager told that she had reported to the emergency number the situation her son was in, but none of the people who attended her fulfilled their duty to check the police records in which the assassin's antecedents appeared.