An inmate who led the recent siege at an Arizona state prison in which two guards were taken hostage has written to the Arizona Republic denying that a female hostage was assaulted and explaining why the second hostage was released. Ricky Wassenaar said that Jason Auch was set free “because he turned out to be a good kid in a bad situation….When I told him that I was going to kill him, he replied, ‘Just shoot me in the head and do it right.’ That impressed me, he was just a stupid kid in a bad situation, so one night…we exchanged him for two pizzas, six Big Macs and fries, 14 packs of camels and about $30 worth of commissary.”
The newspaper did not release details in the letter from the female officer, declaring her the victim of a sexual assault.
Wassenaar charged that “negotiators did not honor all of their promises. They told us that we’d get phone calls to our families when we got to this institution, that we’d have most of our personal property, and that we could contact and give interviews to the media. The warden here has told me to my face ‘No’ on all of the above.”
The Arizona corrections department “and their policies are to blame for this entire event,” Wassenaar said. “I will explain later.” He said he is being held “in a cell with absolutely nothing! I have a mattress, blankett, two sheets, shirt, socks and boxers, that’s all that I have. For the first two days and three nights, I was completely naked except for a ‘smock,’ it’s a floor mat with Velcro that wraps around you.”
Link: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0224rickyletter-ON.html