‘I shouldn’t have survived’ – hostage recounts story while still recovering from stab wounds
By Lethbridge Herald on August 4, 2022.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
Kathryn LInder is recovering from wounds she sustained on July 14 when a woman armed with a knife and air pistol entered Lethbridge Legal Guidance, prompting a standoff with police.Al Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
Kathryn Linder credits her faith and ability to stay calm for helping her survive a hostage-taking that left her in hospital for eight days.
Linder was stabbed multiple times in the neck by a woman who held her hostage in an office at Lethbridge Legal Guidance on July14.
“There were angels in that room. I couldn’t see them but I sure know they were there. I shouldn’t have survived that,” Linder said in an interview Wednesday.
The office manager at Lethbridge Legal Guidance credits the police officers who burst through the office door that was barricaded with chairs for saving her life.
LPS “need to be commended all counts. Those first two officers in there saved my life, no doubt about it,” said the Cardston native and granddaughter of renowned rodeo cowboy Herman Linder.
They pulled the woman holding her hostage off her as she was being stabbed and one applied pressure to the wounds in Linder’s neck.
While she is recovering physically and mentally, Linder doesn’t know how she’ll feel as the weeks progress.
Linder said she told her boss later that of everybody in the office she was probably best equipped to deal with the situation “because I’m just dead calm all the time. I cope really well with stressful situations and difficult clients. I have a strong faith base, I know where my feet are planted and I don’t get rattled,” added Linder.
“Physically, things are coming together really quickly. I haven’t had any emotional setbacks yet but it’s early…I’m emotionally very strong anyway but I don’t know how it will play out in a month from now if and when I decide to go back to the office. I can’t predict that.”
Duty counsel for the woman accused in the crime, 40-year-old Courtney Louise Shaw of Lethbridge, had the matter adjourned Wednesday until Sept. 1. She did not appear by closed circuit TV from the Lethbridge Correctional Centre.
The situation began when the accused entered the office looking for a specific lawyer who wasn’t available, Linder recalled.
“My co-worker contacted the organization he was at and managed to patch him through. So when he called, I said ‘come with me’, I took her into the office so she could speak with him on the phone – the same thing I would have done for any client and when she closed the door and pushed the chairs up against the door I went ‘oh’ and all I could do was just wait it out,’ Linder said.
After a brief discussion with that lawyer, a police negotiator was put on the phone and Linder was made to hang up on him.
A second contact was made by a negotiator and the captor didn’t want to hear what he had to say, said Linder.
The third time a negotiator called, Linder said her captor pointed the gun at her.
She wanted Linder to get on her knees and turn around.
“I refused and she pointed the gun at me and told me to do it again. And I stood up a little straighter and said nothing and I thought ‘if you’re gonna kill me, you’re gonna look me in the eye and do it.’”
All of a sudden, the woman was on her and Linder grabbed her, trying to push her attacker away before police pulled the captor off of her.
Linder said she didn’t expect the situation to go in the direction it did.
Calling herself a “one foot in front of the other, keep your head up and keep moving forward kind of person,” Linder recalls being taken into hospital with a person covering her neck with a hand and going into the operating room and thinking she’d get patched up and be out in a couple of days.
“I know I was praying through the whole thing.”
Linder is 95 per cent sure she did her captor’s initial intake. Because she sits at the front counter, Linder is the first contact with everyone who comes in.
Linder who isn’t familiar with guns, said she thought the air pistol the woman carried was a small handgun.
She recalled walking out of the office and into a waiting ambulance where she was rushed to hospital. Linder, who served a journalism practicum at the Lethbridge Herald in the early 2000s, said perhaps her training kicked into gear and she remembered everything that transpired.
“Because I trained as a journalist, I write just for fun, some part of me wanted to hang onto all these details and I don’t know if that helped me get through it or if it was just my way of coping,” said Linder.
She was wearing a new mustard coloured blouse which she said was soaked scarlet from her blood.
I didn’t know what the extent of my injuries were; I wasn’t in pain.”
She told EMS crews about her health, her blood type, asked them to call her daughter “and I don’t know if that was pure adrenaline. I was gasping for air but I assumed that was just shock. Everything happened so fast at that point,” she recalled.
At a press conference the day after the incident, police told media Critical Incident Team, including the tactical team and crisis negotiators were deployed and established telephone communication with the hostage-taker.
Police negotiated for about one hour and at 3 p.m. due to an imminent threat to the hostage’s life, police entered the building.
Police recovered a knife and Airsoft air pistol at the scene.
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what an amazing soul kathryn linder. wishing you the very best.