A 60-year-old woman taken hostage Tuesday said she focused throughout the ordeal on keeping her captor calm by staying calm herself.
The victim, who asked to be identified only as Kathy, said she was watching TV about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday when “I heard a loud crash.”
There had been a wreck outside her Aurora apartment at East 14th Avenue and Clinton Street, so she went outside to see what happened.
A man police later identified as Grant Bletcher, 22, ran from the crash scene and up behind her as she was going back inside her apartment.
“He shut the door and looked out the peep hole, and I could clearly see the gun,” Kathy said.
Aurora police said Bletcher took off while officers were trying to arrest him on outstanding warrants for menacing and escape.
“He said, ‘Be quiet, or I’ll kill you,’ ” Kathy said. “My blood pressure and fright meter just pegged. He basically scampered around looking for an exit.”
She said Bletcher then used her phone to call his mother.
“He sat down next to me and was talking to his mother, and I held his hand and tried to give him some reassurance and whispering softly that his mother wouldn’t want to see him get hurt or hurt anybody else. He was scared,” Kathy said.
As much as Kathy wanted to leave her apartment, she said she knew if she calmed Bletcher down, he’d be more likely to surrender peacefully.
“I got him to joke and laugh, and relax more,” she said. Kathy even served him some of the casserole she had just cooked. She said Bletcher opened up about his life and admitted he was a drug user. “He kept saying he was 22 years old and lived his adult life in prison.”
As the sun went down and the situation reached its fourth hour Tuesday night, SWAT hostage negotiators talked to Bletcher on the phone. After enough coaxing, Kathy said, Bletcher stashed his gun inside her closet and the two of them walked out the front door hand in hand.
On top of the counts Bletcher was wanted for, he was booked on suspicion of first-degree kidnapping, burglary, menacing and possession of a weapon by a previous offender.
