A TRAGEDY WAITING TO HAPPEN

It wouldn’t take a fortuneteller to predict something like this was going to happen. 84 calls in eight years? What took so long for someone to get killed?

84 CALLS TO POLICE IN EIGHT YEARS: A TROUBLED HOME, A BRANDISHED GUN, A TRAGIC DEATH
By Beth Hundsdorfer and George Pawlaczyk
　
News-Democrat
November 27, 2010
　
O'FALLON, ILLINOIS -- During the night and early morning hours of Nov. 7-8 at 810 Victoria Lane, four people's lives became intertwined.
　
The end result was death.
　
Mary Hammett fled after her boyfriend's 19-year-old son, Joe Shaffer, called O'Fallon Police to once again complain that Hammett, who is Shaffer's father's girlfriend, was drunk and causing trouble, according to a police report.

It was the 84th time police had been called to the house in eight years.
　
Earlier that night, Shaffer told his girlfriend, 20-year-old Alexandra Nance, that they were through as a couple. Police were called, this time to escort Nance from the house.
　
Nance showed up again about an hour later with a gun.
　
Officer Adam Taulbee pulled into the driveway right behind Nance. It was the sixth time overall and the second time that night that the dispatcher had sent Taulbee to 810 Victoria Lane -- a place where, according to an earlier police report, he had once been punched by Hammett.
　
Less than a minute after she pulled into the driveway, police said Nance pointed the gun at Taulbee, who fatally shot Nance.
　
"It's an extraordinary number of times we've been there," Police Chief John Betten said. "I don't know if there's a nexis between that and what happened a few weeks ago."
　
Betten believes Taulbee was justified in shooting because a distraught Nance wouldn't drop the handgun. Illinois State Police, who investigate police shootings, are waiting for toxicology results before turning the case over to St. Clair County prosecutors to decide whether charges should be filed.
　
Joe Shaffer, who was there that night, said Wednesday that Hammett's behavior was not connected to the shooting.
　
"It had nothing to do with Mary or anything else," he said. "If anything, she (Nance) was coming to the house to use the weapon on me. We had just broken up and she couldn't handle the separation."
　
According to 87 police reports obtained by the News-Democrat through the Freedom of Information Act (including three for calls coming after the Nance shooting), the house on Victoria Lane had long been a trouble spot for O'Fallon police, including Taulbee, a nine-year veteran of the force. The reports show Taulbee responded to at least four of these 911 calls before the night Nance was killed.

An inch-high stack of two-page call sheets from the O'Fallon Police Department revealed many requests for police to answer calls alleging Hammett was "intoxicated," "out of control, "causing a disturbance" or "violent." Of the 87 calls to police in eight years placed from the Victoria Lane home, most of them concern Hammett. Most of the calls are from William Shaffer, telling police that Hammett was intoxicated or abusive.