Woman Sentenced To 4 Years In Safeway Hostage Case -- Judge Recommends She Seek Counseling

A King County Superior Court judge gave a 34-year-old Renton woman who held a supermarket worker hostage at knifepoint the shortest recommended sentence of four years yesterday, saying he hoped she would seek help while in prison for past problems with drug and physical abuse.

Holly Suffia entered a Renton Safeway early on May 21, grabbed Delores Brunson from behind while she was filling up helium balloons and held a butcher knife next to her neck for almost five hours.

Suffia told police negotiators she wanted to be killed by officers on national television. After a morning of tearful phone calls, demands for wine, beer, cocaine and media attention, she pushed Brunson from her and invited police once more to shoot her. They subdued her with pepper mace. Later she pleaded guilty to first-degree kidnapping and waived her right to a trial.

"Yours has been a fuller cup of abuse than almost anyone else's I've seen," Judge John Darrah told a weeping Suffia, who had faced a possible maximum sentence of 68 months.

Although it was known that Suffia had suffered frequent physical abuse prior to the May kidnapping attempt, yesterday was the first time she publicly discussed an attempt in 1990 on her life.

At Darrah's prompting, Suffia described being beaten beyond recognition and left for dead by a man who lived in an apartment near hers. She said her face was cut, her nose broken and she was strangled to the point of unconsciousness in an apparent act of random violence. Suffia said she testified in a King Count Superior Court trial in which the man was convicted of attempted murder.

"My whole life has been so filled with trauma," said Suffia. "I don't know what a normal life is."

Darrah asked how a victim of abuse could have knowingly traumatized Brunson, threatening her life for hours.

"I never meant to hurt anyone," said Suffia. "It was a desperate cry for help.

"I told her from the minute that I had her that I wouldn't hurt her. I would not have done anything to let her get hurt. I would not purposefully have put her through that kind of anguish."

Brunson said she returned to work about five weeks ago and is undergoing weekly counseling to help her deal with the experience. She said she still jumps if anyone comes up behind her, and that Safeway managers are letting her work in the back of the store, away from customers.

She asked Darrah to make sure Suffia served her full jail sentence.

"My life has been turned upside down," she said.

Suffia's younger sister, Naomi Goncalves, wept quietly in the hallway outside the courtroom and said her sister regretted the kidnapping.

"If she could turn back time she would."