The Associated Press
An Arizona corrections officer held hostage in a watchtower by two inmates for 15 days says she contemplated suicide during the ordeal.
She also said that at one point, she could have slipped out of her handcuffs, grabbed a loaded shotgun and killed her captors, but she was stopped by the other guard who was held with her.
The woman, whose identity is being withheld because she was sexually assaulted, said prayers, photos of her loved ones and support from friends, colleagues and the public kept her alive.
“There were numerous times when I thought about suicide,” the officer said in an interview broadcast Monday by Phoenix radio station KTAR-AM.
But every time she considered killing herself, she would hear that supporters were wearing ribbons and thinking about her. “I prayed so much. I was never a believer before. The prayers got me through this,” she said.
She was taken hostage with guard Jason Auch on Jan. 18 in a three-story guard tower at the Arizona state prison in Buckeye, outside Phoenix. Auch was released Jan. 24. The female officer was released Feb. 1 when inmates Steven Coy and Ricky Wassenaar surrendered.
The female officer said that she constantly thought of ways to escape, and that one time she told Auch she could get one of the inmates’ guns and kill them.
“I had leaned over to him and asked him, ‘Hey, I can slip off the handcuffs. Both inmates are asleep. I can take a shotgun and blow both of them away. It is already loaded,’ ” she said.
“All I had to do was take it off safety and this would have ended. But I didn’t have the moral support. He said, ‘No, don’t try it.’ The gun was about six to eight feet away. I think I could have made it. ... They were both snoring, snoring up a storm.”
Coy pleaded guilty last week to raping the guard and a female kitchen worker at the prison. Wassenaar was indicted Friday on charges of sexually assaulting the female guard.
The guard said she is trying to recover from the ordeal.
“I have got so many mental issues right now,” she said. “I can start crying at any minute for the smallest things.”