The woman who apparently shared a holding cell with a man last Friday at the Blytheville Police Department Detention Facility is "looking into getting an attorney."
Thursday, Aramis Turner, 22, of Blytheville told the Courier News she was in a holding cell with an intoxicated man for at least 45 minutes during what she says was a 13-hour stay at the holding facility.
Turner said she awoke to the man urinating in front of her, and she felt uncomfortable being locked up with the man.
According to Turner, she was arrested at 2 p.m. Friday, booked at 2:10 p.m. and transported to the county jail at 3:30 a.m. Saturday.
The BPD policy says the Blytheville Police Department Detention Facility is a temporary holding facility of 12 hours or less.
"Adult detainees Male and Female detainees will never be held in the same room or cell together," the policy reads.
Turner claims both parts of the policy were broken.
Earlier this week, Blytheville Police Chief Ross Thompson said the department has launched an internal investigation regarding the matter.
Police records indicate Turner was arrested on two failure to appear warrants, stemming from 2010 second-degree assault and second-degree criminal mischief charges.
According to Turner, officers brought in another female around 7 p.m. and the two chatted for a while.
"Close to 8, a jailer came in and I knocked on the window when he was booking somebody else in and I asked him if he could tell me what's going on," Turner said. "He told me what I was charged with, the two FTAs. Then I asked him if I could make a phone call and he let me make a phone call."
Turner said both females' names were written on a board outside the door.
"He put us back in there and I fell back asleep," she said. "I woke up when the girl was bonding out, and I fell right back asleep. Then I woke up again and there was a man in the cell using the bathroom; he was urinating. He was talking and I turned and faced the wall until he got done. We started knocking on the windows, but wouldn't nobody come. It was quiet like there wasn't nobody else in there. I asked him what time it was and he said it was about 11."
"I don't know how long he had been in there before I woke up," Turner said.
She said the man never touched her, but he got close to her a few times.
"He said stuff, but he didn't put his hands on me," she said.
Turner said she didn't see who put the man in the cell with her.
"I was uncomfortable because the man was drunk," she said. "He was in there for DWI and fleeing on foot and fleeing in the car and FTAs and whole lot of other stuff. I was real uncomfortable and he kept asking me questions and I got up and moved and he was walking in circles. He would kind of walk by me when he would try to talk to me. I was sitting up, looking the other way. Then, we knocked on the window some more and they still didn't come. I know he was in there with me for at least 45 minutes, but it seemed like longer than that. Then he knocked on the windows again when we heard the doors open on the outside."
Turner said a man came to the cell and demanded that the male detainee stop beating on the windows.
"He was like, 'who else is in there with you?' and I was like, 'a female.' And the man was like, 'I've been trying to tell you I was in here with a female,'" Turner said. "The man was like, 'what the h***.' So he stood there with the door open for a minute trying to find out what was going on. So I stood there for another minute and he took me out the cell and sat me in a chair."
At that point, the two were apparently separated and the officer radioed that someone had put a male and female together in the cell, according to Turner.
She said the officer put her in the holding cell, after taking the man out of the holding cell and putting him with another man.
She said she and three men were transported to the county jail at 3:30 a.m.
Attempts to reach Thompson for comment were unsuccessful.
mbrasfield@blythevillecourier.com