If she hadn’t run out of cigarettes, Ashley Smith might never have met Atlanta murder rampage suspect Brian Nichols.
Instead, a late-night run for smokes became an opportunity for Nichols to put a gun in her side and force himself into the suburban apartment she had moved into two days earlier, she said. Within hours, they agreed that God somehow had brought them together.
At first he had wrapped her up with tape and an extension cord, she said. She thought he might try to strangle her. Eventually, her calm manner seemed to calm him.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she recalled Nichols telling her. “I don’t want to hurt anybody else.”
They talked throughout the night, Smith, 26, said in a conference with Atlanta news media Sunday night, a day after the arrest of the suspect alleged to have killed four people in a rampage beginning Friday morning at the Fulton County Courthouse.
Smith said that during her seven-hour hostage ordeal, they talked about the book she was reading–“The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. They talked about her 5-year-old daughter, and the death of her husband four years ago.
“I told him that if he hurt me, my little girl wouldn’t have a mommy or daddy,” she said.
She begged him to let her go see her daughter Saturday morning. At first he said no. Then he said maybe. Then he asked for her help to ditch a pickup truck allegedly taken after the killing of an off-duty federal agent.
She went with him, took her cell phone, thought about calling police, but concluded she might get caught in some sort of crossfire between Nichols and police. So she waited.
“I basically just talked to him and tried to gain his trust,” Smith said. “I wanted to leave to go see my daughter, and that was really important.”
He told her he just wanted to relax in her place for a few days, watch television and eat some real food. She cooked him breakfast–pancakes with butter.
“I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want him to hurt anybody else,” she said. “He’s done enough. . . . And when I looked at him, he didn’t look like he wanted to do it anymore.”
He put his guns under her bed–and let her flee at 9:30 a.m. Saturday to see her daughter.
In the final moments before releasing her, Nichols offered Smith money and offered to hang her curtains, she said.
“He said, `Is there anything I can do while you’re gone?'” Smith said.
`He wanted some normalness’
“He just wanted some normalness in his life right then,” she said. “He said he thought I was an angel sent from God. And that he was lost and God led him right to me.”
Smith was accosted as she arrived home at 2 a.m. after her trip to a convenience store to buy cigarettes. Nichols spotted her in the parking lot of her apartment complex and approached her with a gun as she was about to enter her apartment, she said.
He asked her if she knew who he was. At first, she said no. Then he took off a hat and she recognized him.
“Yeah, I know who you are,” she said she told him. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. I have a 5-year-old little girl.”
According to accounts of the news conference from CNN and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, after Nichols tied her up, he told her to sit in the bathroom while he took a shower. He draped a towel over her head for modesty while he showered, she said.
Afterward they got to talking.
“I asked him why he did what he did, and his reason was because `I’m a soldier,'” she said.
They watched televised reports about the manhunt.
“I cannot believe that’s me on there,” Nichols said, according to Smith.
When Nichols let Smith leave, he said he wanted to stay at the apartment for a few more days, but she said she thought he knew she was going to call 911 after she left.
If he didn’t give up, she told him, “Lots more people are probably going get hurt and you’re probably going to die.”
She went to her apartment complex’s leasing office and called 911. Nichols was captured soon afterward.
As prosecutors sorted through possible charges against Nichols, questions remained about Friday’s courthouse shooting. Critics were asking why a rape defendant was led to court without handcuffs by a single deputy and whether the beleaguered Fulton County Sheriff’s Department, embroiled in controversy for more than a year, was negligent.
Deputy overpowered
On Friday, Nichols, 33, who was entering the final day of his retrial on rape charges, overpowered the deputy, took her gun and went to a courtroom where he fatally shot Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes, 64, and court reporter Julie Ann Brandau, 46, police said. After fleeing the courthouse, he shot and killed sheriff’s deputy Hoyt Teasley, 43, who had run after him, police said.
Police said Nichols hijacked several cars and later killed off-duty U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent David Wilhelm before surrendering about 26 hours after the crime spree began.
Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freeman has declined to answer all courthouse security questions, including the central question of why a single female deputy was left in charge of Nichols, a former football player, as he changed from prison garb to street clothes before court Friday morning.
It was particularly puzzling because suspected homemade weapons had been found on him earlier in the week.
When Freeman took office in January, he inherited a sheriff’s department criticized as poorly managed and an overcrowded county jail that had been deemed unsafe for inmates and employees.
Former Sheriff Jackie Barrett, who is under federal investigation over the management of the office, did not seek re-election in November, but the sheriff’s department and the jail remained in turmoil.
“Please don’t jump to conclusions,” Freeman said, adding that a task force of local and federal authorities would review what happened.
Barry Hazen, a lawyer for Nichols, said one explanation for why the deputy escorted Nichols without handcuffs is that Judge Barnes had been concerned that a juror might have seen the defendant in handcuffs earlier in the week outside the courtroom. The sight of a defendant in handcuffs can be considered prejudicial to the jury, suggesting that the suspect poses a danger. In this case it was determined the juror hadn’t seen anything, but the judge warned deputies to be careful.
“That deputy was slightly admonished for possibly allowing him to be seen in handcuffs,” Hazen said. “I can think of no other reason he would be allowed to walk across the bridge from the old courthouse to the new building without cuffs.”
Nichols was held Sunday on a federal firearms charge while prosecutors sorted out additional federal and state charges. Officials said he could appear in court as early as Monday.
Nichols likely will face federal charges in the death of agent Wilhelm, whose body was found Saturday in a house he was renovating in Atlanta.
