A woman at a Colorado jail was caught on camera dropping from the ceiling and dashing across the lobby, before being confronted by a deputy and arrested.
Leger had just finished using the women’s bathroom in the Inmate Services lobby of the Jefferson County Jail when she found herself locked in.
Reporters who reviewed the arrest affidavit said when Leger couldn’t get the door open, she screamed for help.
Deputies responded to her distress by trying to pry the door open. They reported hearing Leger yelling through the door that deputies had “released someone ahead of her that had threatened her life.”
The officers also said that they overheard Leger saying she was having a psychotic episode.
When the officers managed to get the door open, they found evidence suggesting Leger had dismantled parts of the bathroom—including a paper towel dispenser—and had crawled into the wall.
Deputies ran up an emergency stairwell in an effort to find her, suspecting she might have crawled to the floor above.
But a security camera trained on the lobby captured footage of the woman as she emerged from the ceiling, dangled for a moment, and then dropped to the floor.
She then springs up and sprints across the lobby, and dashes inside a room, before darting out again and a split second later coming face-to-face with a deputy.
Leger was then apprehended, booked for criminal mischief, and spent two more nights in jail.
Court records cited by Fox31 suggest the woman caused $400 in damages to the bathroom.
“It breaks my heart for a couple of reasons,” said Andrew Romanoff, the president and CEO of Mental Health Colorado, in an interview with the station.
Romanoff said that 55 percent of inmates in state prison and 65 percent of inmates in county jails are thought to have some kind of mental health or substance abuse disorder.
“There are too many people in Colorado with mental illness who aren’t getting the care they need, turning our jails and prisons into warehouses for folks with mental illness is the most expensive and least therapeutic decision we could make,” said Romanoff. “You shouldn’t have to be charged, you shouldn’t have to be incarcerated in order to get care.”
A spokeswoman for the Jefferson County district attorney told Fox31 that it was too early to say whether Leger was suffering from a mental illness when she climbed into the ceiling.
She added that Leger’s attorney could request a mental health evaluation to determine whether she is fit to stand trial.
Leger is due back in court Jan. 17.
