Police Failure to Attend 999 Call Results in Tragic Deaths of Four People, Including Two Young Children

A tragic series of events unfolded in Costessey, near Norwich, when Norfolk Police failed to attend a critical 999 call from a house where four people, including two young children, were later found dead. The incident, which is under investigation, raises serious concerns about police response protocols and the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

According to Norfolk Police, a man made the initial 999 call from the address at approximately 6am on Friday. Despite the urgency of the situation, no officers were dispatched to the scene. Around an hour later, a second call was made by a member of the public, prompting a response from the police. Officers forced entry into the house at around 7.15am and discovered the bodies of two young girls, a 45-year-old man, and a 36-year-old woman.

In the aftermath, Norfolk Police referred the failure to attend the first call to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). The referral comes after an internal review revealed that the initial call had not been acted upon appropriately. The police force had already referred itself to the IOPC on Friday in connection with a separate matter linked to the case. Just 11 days prior to the deaths, officers had been involved in a missing persons inquiry at the same address, raising further concerns about the circumstances surrounding the deaths.

The four individuals found dead have not yet been formally identified, but the man has been named locally as Bartlomiej Kuczynski, a Polish engineer who is believed to have lived at the address with his two daughters. The woman found dead with them is understood to have been visiting and was not a resident of the house. The police believe the four victims were members of the same family, though this is still under investigation.

DCI Chris Burgess, from the Norfolk and Suffolk major investigation team, confirmed that postmortem examinations would be conducted to establish the cause of death. “While I can confirm all four people were found with injuries, we will not be disclosing any further information until these examinations have taken place,” Burgess said. The examinations for the man and woman are scheduled for tomorrow, while those for the two girls will take place on Wednesday.

The failure of the police to respond to the initial emergency call has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of their emergency response systems. As the investigation into the deaths continues, both the police and the public will be waiting for answers regarding the cause of this horrific incident and the role the missed call may have played in the tragic outcome.

The IOPC investigation will seek to determine whether the police’s failure to attend the first 999 call constitutes negligence or failure of duty. The outcome of the postmortem examinations and ongoing investigations will likely shed more light on both the cause of death and the events leading up to the discovery of the bodies.