Jurors hear 911 tape
My mom is dying
Adam Israel, right, is flanked by his defense team of Marvin Hamilton and Dianne Thoben on Wednesday morning in Kenai. Israel is on trial for the stabbing death of his mother in 2005.
M. Scott Moon
Emergency dispatch and Alaska State Trooper recordings capturing what happened in the minutes that followed the 2005 stabbing of a Soldotna woman were played to Kenai jurors in the murder trial of a 24-year-old Soldotna man on Wednesday.
“I need help now, I need help now. My mom is dying ... I stabbed her. Hurry, hurry,” the defendant’s voice yelled in a 911 dispatch tape played to jurors.
Adam Israel has been charged with the stabbing death of his mother, 43-year-old Dorothy Israel, in their home nearly two years ago.
District Attorney June Stein has characterized Adam as controlling, argued he intentionally killed his mother and asked the jury find him guilty of first-degree murder.
Public defender Marvin Hamilton, however, has argued that Adam was battling internal demons and on the day he stabbed his mother had intended on killing himself rather than his mother, and should not be found guilty of first-degree murder.
As jurors listened to emergency dispatch and trooper recordings, Hamilton told jurors the tapes showed Adam desperately wanted his mother to live.
“Man, what did I do? What did I do?” Adam’s voice was heard saying on the dispatcher recording. “She’s still breathing, hurry. I’m trying to help her.”
Stein, however, pointed out that when the dispatcher asks Adam if the stabbing was an accident he doesn’t answer.
“She said she hates me,” Adam replies in the recording in response to the dispatcher’s question.
In addition to the tapes, jurors also listened as a trooper and Central Emergency Services paramedic testified as to what they saw of Adam and his bleeding mother when they arrived at their residence on West Little Avenue, where the stabbing occurred.
Trooper Vanessa Meade said that when she arrived at the residence she walked past a red truck where Adam’s youngest brother was seated in the passenger seat, entered the house through the garage and climbed a set of stairs into the house. At the top of the stairs she saw two other law enforcement officers, Adam standing near a couch and yelling, and Dorothy laying on the kitchen floor, she said.
CES medics arrived at the same time as Meade, and CES engineer paramedic Dale Lawyer testified that when they arrived on the scene, Dorothy was lying on her back in a pool of blood and that there was a kitchen knife resting on the floor next to her body.
“Troopers or (Soldotna police) had someone in custody, who was very upset,” he said. “There was a pool of blood on the floor and somebody was screaming in my ear ‘Save her, save her.’”
Lawyer said he moved the knife to the kitchen counter as paramedics searched Dorothy for signs of breathing and a pulse. Dorothy was not breathing and did not have a pulse and paramedics cut away her clothing to locate the stabbing wound, he said.
Seeing none, Lawyer said he asked Adam where he had stabbed her and that Adam replied he had stabbed her in the back.
As paramedics worked, Lawyer said Adam yelled at them to hurry, before his mother passed away.
Shortly after Meade arrived, she helped handcuff Adam and led him outside to her patrol car where she asked for his name, age and read him his Miranda rights.
In a recording of Meade’s contact with Adam, he is heard yelling “Just kill me ... I can’t believe I did that.”
As Meade tries to read Adam his rights, he says he isn’t paying attention.
“What do you want? I just killed her. I just killed my own mom,” he says in the recording.
Attorneys also displayed photographs taken at the scene. In a photograph taken of the kitchen floor after CES took Dorothy to Central Peninsula General Hospital, a pool of smeared blood stains the floor and the clothing cut away from Dorothy lay scattered on the floor.
Photographs taken of Adam in handcuffs show him standing outside of the house in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. In the photographs blood stains can be seen on his hands and arms, and his shoulder-length hair hanging in his face.
Patrice Kohl can be reached at patrice.kohl@peninsulaclarion.com.