13 February 2025

“She lived by helping others, and for that we are all grateful.”

Those were the final words in the eulogy offered by Wiltshire Police chief Tony Watkins as Jamila Williams was laid to rest, and repeated at IAED’s award ceremony in Manchester last Thursday. As first-time posthumous winner of IAED’s Dispatcher of the Year UK, Jamila was honored in absentia by the Chief, who led her nomination, three of her former colleagues, her fiancé and parents. All of them insisted this year’s event, regardless of the tragedy of their loss, should be a celebration of life and continuing courage.

Jamila’s consistently decisive actions proved invaluable as an emergency situation unfolded on 6 October, 2024 in Purton, one of the villages in Wiltshire Police Department’s constabulary. Following early services at St. Mary’s church, members of the congregation heard chilling screams coming from the manor house next door and called 999. The screams stopped shortly thereafter, but uncertainty and fear lingered.

Using her professional experience, Jamila asked the caller to stay on the line and engage fellow congregants to inform people not to walk near the house and take an alternate route home if possible while she notified the police station.  After ensuring public safety, she begin gathering critical details and, within minutes, police, including Chief Watkins, arrived at the scene.

The manor’s owners — a London-based banker, his wife, a member of the Thai royal family, and their two children — were not expected to be in Purton that weekend. However, as the head caretaker later confirmed, their plans often changed at the last minute.

Police immediately split up, with one pair of officers covering the back yard while the Chief and another officer approached the front door. Although some movement was seen inside through a front window, their calls and the doorbell went unanswered. Meanwhile, Jamila’s team called the fire and rescue service to protect the church congregation should the situation escalate. Then another call came in – this time from someone inside the house.

A man on the line issued a forceful demand: police were to leave immediately, or things would worsen. Recognizing a growing threat, Jamila remained composed, following protocol and framing her questions to assess the situation while working to de-escalate tensions. She then scribbled a note for her colleague to alert Chief Watkins — there was indeed an intruder inside the house, and she was gathering more information.

On that call, she quickly learned that the man had a woman and two kids as hostages and, if he could leave, he wouldn’t harm them. She relayed this information to her team, who told the Chief, and a plan was made to resolve the emergency. Meanwhile, Jamila stayed on the phone with the kidnapper, calming his nerves, metering the situation and brokering direct contact between him and law enforcement. It was later revealed that the man had entered the house expecting it to be empty, and only intended to steal anything he could easily transport. It was only after going upstairs that he saw the family and panicked. As it turned out, the husband was away on business, and negotiations successfully ended any standoff.

Without Jamila’s quick thinking – keeping the church congregation safe, mobilizing the right law enforcement and fire teams, maintaining open lines of communication, accurately assessing the situation, calming the suspect, and managing the emergency – the outcome could have been drastically different.

Tragically, only two days later, Jamila lost her life in a fatal car accident. She was only 27. While the kidnapping in Purton was likely the most demanding challenge of her career, she managed hundreds of cases over her six years as an Emergency Dispatch Officer and leaves behind a legacy of excellence within the Wiltshire emergency services community and throughout the UK.

IAED congratulates all of this year’s award winners for their outstanding contributions, including:

Kenneth Bukhari – Instructor of the Year UK (Bristol)

Edmond Winters – Dr. Jeff Clawson Leadership Award UK (Newcastle)

About Wiltshire Emergency Dispatch:

Wiltshire Emergency Dispatch, covering the county of Wiltshire (including the Borough of Swindon), serves 722,000 people over an area of 1,346 square miles in South West England. Its team of dispatchers coordinates the police, fire and medical services with two centres, at Devizes and Gablecross.  wiltshire.police.uk/ and dwfire.org.uk/

About Priority Dispatch Corp.:

Priority Dispatch™ is the world leader in providing research-based protocol solutions to emergency call centers in medical, fire, police, and nurse triage disciplines. For over 44 years, EMS and 911 agencies have used the Medical Priority Dispatch System™ (MPDS®), initially with card sets and now only fully represented in ProQA software. Its solutions have been time-tested in 30 languages across hundreds of millions of calls and serve communities in thousands of agencies in 59 countries. Get to know us at prioritydispatch.net.

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