Nurses responding to a suicide in Arizona’s women’s prison on Saturday morning were impeded by a gate that shouldn’t have been locked, one witness told Phoenix New Times.
On Monday, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry announced that 34-year-old Crystal Walker died on Saturday after she hanged herself in her cell at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville, the state women’s prison in Goodyear. She is the fourth person to die by suicide in the ADCRR’s custody this year.
A witness, Sarah Harbeke, said she watched the prison’s response to Walker’s suicide unfold from her seat in the visitors’ room of Perryville’s Santa Cruz unit, one of five open units in the prison complex. It was a food visit day, a designated day of the year when visitors to the prison can bring in a meal for inmates. Harbeke had been incarcerated in Santa Cruz a few years ago and was bringing funfetti cupcakes and Filiberto’s carne asada fries to a friend who was still doing her time…