Hostage at Prison Tells Negotiators She’s OK

A correctional officer held captive by two inmates for more than a week in a Buckeye prison watch tower told negotiators she was all right, officials said.

Negotiators also are getting “increasingly more compliant responses from the hostage-takers,” said Ivan Bartos, an Arizona Department of Corrections official. “It’s a sign that negotiations have been effective.”

Negotiators’ phone conversation with the guard Sunday was the first they had heard from her since prisoners released a male guard Saturday, a Corrections Department spokesman said.