Colorado Nurse Sues After Being a ‘Hostage’ in Police Drill
July 31st, 2014Via: Reuters:
A Colorado woman is suing the nursing home where she worked and local police for allegedly not telling her that a gunman who held her hostage was a police officer conducting a safety drill, court documents show.
Michelle Meeker claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Denver that she was terrorized when an armed man confronted her last October at the Heritage Park Care Center in Carbondale, Colorado.
Meeker, a registered nurse, was tending to one of her long-term patients when another employee told her to see what a “suspicious” man sitting in the center’s day room wanted, according to the complaint.
The man then showed her a handgun he had in his waistband and ordered her into an unoccupied room.
Although the man told her in hushed tones that he was a police officer, the lawsuit says, Meeker was not informed beforehand of the drill and was unsure whether he was telling the truth.
“In a desperate plea for her life, she begged the man not to hurt her, telling him she had a young child,” the complaint says.
The officer, the Carbondale police chief, and executives of the center are named as defendants.
