It was like any other day for mental health counselor Kristine Nystrom as she met with inmates at the Clark County Jail on Jan. 13, 2015. She was there to help people — at her first job since she obtained her professional license.
However, about halfway through her shift, the day’s events took a horrifying twist, Clark County Deputy Prosecutor James Smith said, after an inmate Nystrom was meeting with attacked her and barricaded her office door shut in the jail’s medical unit. Corrections deputies who heard her “blood-curdling” screams rushed to force open the door and stopped the attack, he said.
This was the scene Smith laid out for the jury during opening statements Tuesday in Gregory Wright’s trial in Clark County Superior Court. Wright, 35, of Vancouver faces charges of first-degree kidnapping and attempted second-degree assault.
“This case is about terror, a fear so basic, so primal, so core to a person,” Smith said. “Terror inflicted on a mental health counselor who’s there to help people like (Wright).”
During his opening statements, Wright’s defense attorney, Louis Byrd Jr., argued that where the alleged attack happened is “irrelevant.” He compared the incident to a domestic-violence situation in which one partner might confine the other to a room.
Byrd urged the jurors to pay particular attention to the timing and sequence of events, and to who saw and talked to the victim that day. He told the jurors that although they will hear that the victim was punched, grabbed, pushed and pulled, the “proof is in the pictures.” Several photos of the victim’s alleged injuries will be presented to the jury over the course of the trial.
“But let the guiding light be the picture that says a 1,000 words,” he said.
In an interview with The Columbian, Byrd said that the defense’s position is that the case is being overcharged based on the victim’s status and where the alleged incident took place.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Wright, a convicted sex offender, was incarcerated in the jail on a pending charge of failure to register as a sex offender when he met with mental health counselor John Furze just before 4 p.m. Jan. 13, 2015. After the session, Wright requested to speak with a different mental health counselor, a specific blond woman he had talked to before.
The woman, identified as Nystrom, met with Wright in one of the residential pods at the jail. But then Wright asked if they could talk in her office in the jail’s medical unit, and Nystrom agreed, the affidavit said. They met in the office and kept the door open, per jail policy, so that a corrections deputy could see inside.
About 15 minutes into the conversation, Wright “suddenly stood up like he was going to leave the office and said, in a quiet but rough tone of voice, ‘What can you do for me?’ ” Clark County sheriff’s Detective Kevin Harper wrote in the affidavit.
Nystrom testified Tuesday that in one motion, Wright looked out the door, kicked out the door stop, closed the door and struck her in the face. She said she was knocked to the floor.
“I was very, very frightened,” a tearful Nystrom said. “I went to red alert. My only thought was that ‘I have to get out. I can’t be in here.’
“It seemed like time slowed down. My brain was consumed with getting out,” she added.
Nystrom said when she stood up, Wright grabbed her by the neck, and she squirmed away. He then tried to barricade the door with a heavy metal desk from inside the office, she said. That’s when she dove behind the desk, she said, and Wright pulled at the neck of her sweater.
About five corrections deputies who heard Nystrom screaming forced the door open and pulled her out of the room, according to court records.
Nystrom sustained bruising to the left side of her neck, right side of her face, right jawline and back of her left hand. She also had an abrasion on her left elbow and right thigh, swelling on her head and a cut on her left index finger, court records show.
Smith told the jury that Wright acknowledged he asked to speak with Nystrom but that he said he didn’t remember attacking her.
Wright is required to register as a sex offender in connection with a second-degree assault with sexual motivation from 1998 and four convictions for failing to register as a sex offender.
In addition to this case, he has been in custody on a pending murder charge. Wright is accused of fatally strangling 19-year-old Daytona Hudgins, whose body was discovered at a homeless camp July 19, 2014.
Wright’s trial continues Wednesday.
