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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.
It was about two hours into the visit when Harbeke, who sat at the table in the visitor’s room closest to the gate to the main yard, saw the nurses hurrying down the sidewalk that runs next to the visitor’s room window. She watched them stumble over several chairs blocking the pathway to the main yard, which leads to the housing area. Then they realized the gate in front of them was locked.
“Why the fuck are these gates locked?” Harbeke recalled one of the nurses saying.
About 30 seconds later, two correctional officers — who had been walking less urgently behind the nurses, Harbeke said — arrived. They opened the gate and the nurses entered. Harbeke said she doesn’t know if Walker had a chance at survival when the response got there, but that the delay caused by the locked gate could have mattered.
“If she was alive and 30 seconds was what needed to be done, and they didn’t make it in 30 seconds, then like that, that’s on them,” Harbeke told New Times.
Provided by Sarah Harbeke
ADCRR did not respond to emailed questions from New Times about Walker, her history with self-harm and mental illness, or the locked gate. The department described Walker’s death in a notification to the public about her suicide sent out midday Monday.
“Inmate Walker was discovered unresponsive in her cell and prison staff immediately responded and conducted life-saving measures until paramedics arrived onsite. Responding paramedics, in consultation with medical staff, pronounced Walker deceased,” the notification read.
Walker, who was Native American, was convicted of drug charges in Coconino County. She had been in the agency’s custody since November 2025.
Santa Cruz is a medium-security unit. According to ADCRR policy, it is “encouraged to practice open yard operations.” Unlike high- or maximum-security prisons, where movement is highly restricted, many internal gates are left open to allow people to pass more freely. The locked gate the nurses encountered in the Santa Cruz unit regulated access between the main yard and an administrative area that included medical offices and work placements.
It’s a gate that typically is supposed to be open, said Harbeke, who was incarcerated in Santa Cruz for four years. But whether or not it’s open is inconsistent, she said. Medium security prisons will restrict movements during security situations known as Incident Command Systems, such as a suicide. But the gate was closed before Walker’s death triggered one, Harbeke told New Times.
As staff responded to Walker’s suicide, the prison allowed the visitations to continue, though they were restricted to the visitor room with only one guard standing watch. Harbeke said she thinks that was because of understaffing, a chronic problem that the corrections officer union has highlighted as well. (The union declined to speak with New Times.) Harbeke and everyone else at the food visit watched the rest of the emergency response teams arrive through the window.
“They had the appropriate people show up after the fact,” she said. “They did a good job with that — making sure that the right people responded.”
Harbeke said she experienced the prison handling multiple suicides and attempted suicides while she was incarcerated. A friend, Tracie Otero, hanged herself while they were incarcerated at Perryville in September 2020. Being there when Walker killed herself made her feel shaky.
“I thought it was over that part of my life of having to deal with those emergency situations in prison,” she said.
Harbeke left Santa Cruz just after noon, when her visit slot ended. On the bus out of the facility, Walker’s suicide came up in conversation. Harbeke said that a correction officer on the bus — who was from a different unit, San Carlos — was so dismissive that she called on Monday to file a formal complaint.
“Well,” Harbeke said the corrections officer told her, “people die every day.”
