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Guard Killed in Delaware Prison Attack Praised for Saving His Colleagues

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Prison Disturbance
Robert Coupe, secretary of the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, speaks at a news conference in Smyrna, Del., on Feb. 2, 2017.Suchat Pederson—AP
By Tessa Berenson

The guard killed in a hostage standoff at a Delaware prison Thursday saved some of his colleagues’ lives before his death, his union said.

“Even in his last moments as the inmates attempted to take over the building, Sgt. [Steven] Floyd told a couple of lieutenants to get out of the building and that it was a trap,” Geoffrey Klopp, president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware, said, according to the Associated Press.

Prison Disturbance
This photo provided by the Delaware Department of Correction shows Sgt shows Steven Floyd. Floyd, who died in a hostage standoff at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware.Delaware Department of Correction—AP

Klopp said inmates staged a fight to get Floyd to come over, then forced him into a closet. The inmates held Floyd, two other prison guards and a counselor in a nearly 20-hour standoff, before authorities used a backhoe to break through a barricade of footlockers filled with water. Authorities have not revealed how Floyd was killed.

Klopp described Floyd as someone who would go the “extra mile for any human being he could help.”

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Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.Rogers@time.com