“My dad killed my mom,” the young girl told 911 dispatchers in the heartbreaking call received on July 19 — before the suspect called police himself to report he’d stabbed a “loved one,” but was unsure if they were still alive, before fleeing the scene.
A heartbreaking 911 call led police in Portland, Oregon on July 19 to a tragic scene as a 24-year-old mother was found stabbed to death in the home where she had allegedly sought refuge from her husband after suffering years of domestic abuse.
It was the couple’s 4-year-old daughter who made the first call.
“My dad killed my mom,” the young voice said on the line before providing her father’s first name, according to newly-released court documents received by ABC affiliate KATU. According to authorities, the suspect himself also called, allegedly admitting that he’d stabbed “a loved one,” but did not know if they had survived.
By the time police arrived, suspect S. Mate Joseph, 28, had reportedly fled the scene. His wife Neilyann Ysam, 24, was found deceased. The medical examiner’s office determined that her death was a homicide after she’d been stabbed, per a news release from the Portland Police.
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Police also found Ysam’s five young children in the home, all under the age of 6 years old, according to Law&Crime, and including the 4-year-old that had first made contact with the department. All of the children were unharmed and have been taken into custody by family members.
As they dug into the investigation behind her murder, police discovered that Ysam and her children had recently fled from Washington to Oregon and moved into the home with Ysam’s aunt in an effort to escape years of alleged domestic violence at the hands of Joseph.
The aunt’s next-door neighbor, Annalee Dickinson, spoke with Fox affiliate KPTV after Ysam’s murder. “It’s just terrifying to know that they had to witness something like that,” she said. “They have to live with that for the rest of their lives. It’s not something they can unsee, unlearn, or be told a story about. They have to sit with that, and growing up, I’m sure it’s going to be really hard on them.”
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“I’ve been doing this quite a while. I have had cases like that before, but they’re pretty rare,” Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Brian Davidson told KATU. “It’s again a horrific thing for a child to witness any act of violence and certainly one of this order of magnitude, you just can’t, again, overstate how terrible that is.”
Joseph was arrested on July 19, a little more than three hours later, in Clark County, Washington and booked on an arrest warrant for Burglary in the First Degree and Murder in the Second Degree-Domestic Violence, according to the news release. He was extradited to Multnomah County Jail on Wednesday.
According to court documents, her niece and the children had moved in after fleeing the Vancouver, Washington home she’d been sharing with Joseph because of his alleged violence. KATU dug into court records and found a 2019 case against Joseph in Vancouver, where he’d allegedly assaulted Ysam while she was pregnant.
According to KATU at the time, Joseph allegedly assaulted Ysam in a parking lot, with reports describing her as “barefoot, screaming, crying and attempting to get away.”
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The reports also state that while the two men who’d called police were waiting for them to arrive, Joseph’s 16-year-old brother, Clayton Joseph, approached them with a knife and was allegedly slashing at them and threatening them because they’d called police.
When police arrived, per Oregon Live, the teen raised the knife and approached them, refusing commands to stop and drop the weapon, leading one officer to fire a single shot at him. Police were later cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident. The teen died at a hospital from his injuries.
The elder Joseph was ultimately taken down by a taser in that incident, per police, and pleaded guilty to assault in the fourth degree, harassment, and jumping bail. He was sentenced to 11 days and given a no-contact order from a judge. He also has a pending DUI charge in Multnomah County, but missed that court date due to being in jail for this alleged murder.
If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages; Calls are confidential and toll-free.
