When 18-year-old Jennifer Koon, a college sophomore at St. John Fisher College, went to Pittsford Plaza to get money out to buy bagels, she never thought that would be her last time.
While at the ATM, she was kidnapped, raped, and brutally shot three times back in November of 1993. She had been shot in the head twice and her back once.
Apparently, Koon had dialed 9-1-1 while begging for her life calling, "help me, help me." The problem was that her phone did not have a location on it at the time of her call. The 9-1-1 operators had heard her cries but there was nothing they could do. Her phone had been locked on 9-1-1 when they found her body in an alleyway. Basically, the 9-1-1 system had failed Koon so something had to change.
Back then, the technology of tracking was not up to par in helping the police find her. Technology was fast-forwarded to help police find people who had been kidnapped or murdered more easily. David Koon, Jennifer's dad, and a NY State Assemblyman, came up with a Peacemaking Fund that mandated that wireless phones and carriers would connect to networks so that the tracking technologies would find callers while in distress.
This was a brilliant idea for the future of cases like Jennifer Koon's.
The man who kidnapped Koon was Willis Knight. He was 31 years old at the time of the murder. He was arrested and sentenced to 37.5 years to life for the murder of Jennifer Koon. While serving his time, Knight wanted to change his name to Rasool Khadafi while he remained in prison and served out his sentence.
Koons' parents didn't like the idea of this and created a petition to stop this nonsense of the name change. People in the Rochester area were torn because some people believed in Willis getting a second chance at life, while others thought he should never get out due to the heinous crime.
Regardless, the 9-1-1 system has been revived and now the system has a tracking device on our phones so we can find the distressed victims much faster when they call 9-1-1. Hopefully, this change has brought some Peace to the Koon family.
Written by:
Heidi Reilly
Sources:
Comments