Briann Lindsey
Prosecutors say Briann Lindsey stabbed her boyfriend to death earlier this year in Trenton’s West Ward, but two 9-1-1 calls paint a different picture of what happened that afternoon.
“My boyfriend, he’s bleeding,” Lindsey said about 4:10 p.m. March 6, according to the 9-1-1 recordings obtained by The Trentonian.
“What happened to him?” the Mercer County dispatcher asks.
“I don’t know,” Lindsey responds coolly as if the incident had no alleged connection to domestic violence.
“Is he awake?” the dispatcher asks.
“Yes,” Lindsey said while her romantic lover, 35-year-old Christopher Johnson, was dying on the floor of their shared Brookville Commons apartment off Clearfield Avenue.
“What’s wrong with him?” the dispatcher asks.
“I don’t know,” Lindsey bluntly responded as if she had no idea why her boyfriend was barely clinging to life.
Christopher Johnson (submitted photo)
“Ma’am, why does he need an ambulance? … Ma’am, what’s going on there that you need help?”
Instead of answering the question, Lindsey, 25, began crying excessively in that point of the 9-1-1 call.
“Ma’am, I need to try to get a little more information about what’s going on,” the dispatcher says.
After a few moments of silence, Lindsey says, “Please, just come. Please.”
Lindsey eventually hands the phone over to an unidentified man. He, in turn, tells the dispatcher that the victim “came in the house bleeding.”
“OK. Do you know what happened?” the dispatcher asks the man.
“No, I don’t,” the man responds.
Johnson is said to be “awake” at that point in the 9-1-1 call, but the dispatcher probes for additional information about the victim’s condition, asking: “Is he acting normally? Is he able to tell you what happened or no?”
“Umm, just send an ambulance, I guess,” the unidentified man responds.
“I already have an ambulance on the way. I just want to see if there is anything I can do before they get there,” the dispatcher says.
“No, it’s really nothing much,” the man says. “Just send them.”
Around 4:17 p.m., the phone is passed back to Lindsey. She tells the dispatcher that Johnson cannot breathe.
“OK. I have an ambulance on the way already,” the dispatcher tells Lindsey. “They are already on their way. I just need to try to get some more information about what’s going on.”
“Please hurry up,” Lindsey responds. “You can get information in a minute. Please hurry up.”
“Ma’am, if you calm down and you listen to me, I can help you before they get there,” the dispatcher says. “If you keep screaming, I cannot.”
Lindsey says a few more words in a hysterical tone, which prompts the dispatcher to further inquire about what happened over there, exactly, at Brookville Commons.
“Was he assaulted? Was he stabbed? Was he shot? Did he fall off of his bike?” the dispatcher asks.
“I think he was stabbed,” Lindsey responded as if she was not 100 percent sure what injuries her boyfriend suffered. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
At 4:18 p.m., Mercer County dispatch received a second 9-1-1 call from another woman who reported Lindsey’s boyfriend was suffering from an apparent stab wound to the chest. The unidentified woman further stated that Lindsey would perform CPR on the victim.
The dispatcher gave full instructions on how to perform CPR and asked the second 9-1-1 caller whether Johnson’s girlfriend was performing the emergency procedure. The caller confirmed that Lindsey was in fact performing CPR on her dying boyfriend.
“OK. I need her to continue to do that until the ambulance gets there. OK,” the dispatcher says. “Keep doing it until the ambulance comes, and tell her, ‘Do not stop.’ … Tell her do not stop the compressions until they get there.”
Medics arrived at the apartment about 4:22 p.m. March 6, and Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene shortly thereafter.
Lindsey tried to clean up the crime scene prior to police arrival, prosecutors allege. Mercer County Homicide Task Force Detective Jessica Senese of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office arrested Lindsey on March 7 on allegations she murdered Johnson.
State public defender Nicole Carlo, who represented Lindsey in March, said her client had a history of mental health issues and noted Lindsey was placed on suicide watch at the county jail. A judge eventually ordered Lindsey to pretrial detention and a Mercer County grand jury in May indicted her on the following three counts: First-degree murder, third-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and fourth-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.
Lindsey is scheduled for a post-indictment arraignment 9 a.m. July 24 before Mercer County Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw.