Night of worry spooks Leal when mishap locks him in jail
by A.J. Flick on Aug. 18, 2007, under Local, Special
A City Council member spent a night in jail this week – by accident.
Steve Leal, 59, who represents the West and South sides, was alone Wednesday afternoon while inspecting a cell in an empty section of the Pima County Jail, where he works in facilities management. His task, after two recent suicides by hanging, was to identify “anchor points” that inmates might use to hang themselves.
“I walked through the door, and the door just closed on me,” Leal said Friday. “In that second that it clicked, a gallon of adrenaline drops into your system.”
Terror set in when Leal realized the section, 1-G, might not be checked for months. It’s being used for storage while plans for its reuse are developed.
He had no cell phone and no radio. No one could hear his calls for help.
There was water, but no air conditioning.
His window couldn’t be seen from the section’s door, so he threw his wallet and credit cards out of the cell so someone passing by might notice them.
To calm himself, Leal thought of everyone who might miss him and wonder where he was and look for him. Even if a search was called for, Leal feared searchers might not enter empty sections of the jail.
“It was one of the hardest, darkest things I ever experienced in my life,” he said.
Luckily, Abe Marques, who works for Leal at his Ward 5 office, knew his boss’s habits well enough to worry when Leal’s car wasn’t at his home around 10 p.m., Leal said. Marques found Leal’s car at the jail.
The lights in Leal’s office were on, his glasses and cell phone on the desk. That prompted jail officials to call for a search of every inch of the jail.
The first place they decided to search was 1-G.
Leal woke from a fitful sleep around 1:15 a.m., he said.
“You can hear doors in the jail opening and closing. It resonates throughout the building. Boom! Boom! Boom!” Leal said.
“I woke up and heard the sound of a door opening, and it was so crisp and clear, I thought, ‘My God! That’s the door to this pod!’ But then another voice in my head said, ‘You’re deluding yourself.’”
Sure enough, though, the search had come to Leal’s rescue.
“I’m really, really lucky and very, very relieved and very, very grateful to the people who cared enough and were worried enough to take action,” Leal said.
As a result of Leal’s ordeal, even empty units at the jail are now inspected at least twice a day, he said.
In addition, Leal and other officials now have radios so they can call for help.
