Cleveland kidnapper found dead in prison cell
Posted September 4, 2013 9:40 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
COLUMBUS, OHIO (NEWS1130) – Ohio corrections officials say Ariel Castro who held three women captive in his home for nearly a decade has committed suicide at a state prison facility.
Spokeswoman JoEllen Smith says 53-year-old Castro was found hanging in his cell around 9:20 p.m. Tuesday at the Correctional Reception Center in Orient. Prison medical staff performed CPR before Castro was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
“I believe that he’s a coward,” a neighbour tells News Channel 5 in Cleveland. “How he had these girls in captivity for ten years and he couldn’t manage ten days in prison. So it’s like, he took the easy way out.”
“I was just astonished,” another neighbour tells the ABC News affiliate. “I thought he’d be in prison for a long time and then he’d do an interivew to find out the truth as to how he could do something like this.”
The three women disappeared separately between 2002 and 2004, when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. They escaped May 6, when one of the women broke part of a door and yelled to neighbours for help. Castro was arrested that evening.
Castro was sentenced Aug. 1 to life in prison plus 1,000 years on his guilty plea to 937 counts including kidnapping and rape.
