‘I don’t want to die.’ SCI Phoenix inmate recalls being strangled by cellmate.

Jason Joyce had only been in state prison for 36 hours when he had to fight for his life, he said Tuesday at the start of the trial for the man accused of strangling him.

Joyce, 53, said he begged his cellmate at the State Corrections Institute at Phoenix to release him from the chokehold that was cutting off his oxygen.

“Please don’t do this,” Joyce said he told Nathan Blose in October. “I don’t want to die.”

Blose, 41, did release Joyce, who survived with burst blood vessels in his eyes and injuries to his neck. And now the Northeast Pennsylvania native faces a Montgomery County jury this week on charges of strangulation and simple assault.

But Blose’s crimes didn’t end there, prosecutors say: Two days later, they said, Blose killed his next cellmate.

His murder trial in connection with that alleged crime will be held later this year, leaving jurors to consider only the attack on Joyce.

Assistant District Attorney Robert George urged the jury to find Blose guilty of both charges, saying the crime was sudden, unprovoked, and debilitating.

“I want you to recognize the reprehensible actions of the defendant,” he said, “and I ask you to hold him accountable for them.”

Blose’s attorney, Scott Frame, said the case against his client had been built entirely on the word of Joyce, who he said was unreliable and had given conflicting information to the police.

Frame said the two men got into a fight inside their cell, and Joyce lost. He criticized investigators for not gathering more evidence and relying too heavily on Joyce’s account of what happened.

Joyce testified that he was inside the cell he shared with Blose on Oct. 30, sitting at a desk and filling out paperwork. There was no tension or animosity between them, he said.

(Joyce was serving a two-to-four year sentence at the time for violating his probation in a 2016 drug case in Philadelphia, court records show.)

Without warning, he said, Blose wrapped his arm around Joyce’s neck and put him in a choke hold. Joyce briefly lost consciousness and woke up on the floor of the cell, he said, still being choked and struggling to breathe.

Joyce was able to pull Blose’s arm away enough to speak, he said, and he pleaded with Blose to let him go. He said Blose told him to “shut up” or he’d break his neck.

“And by the grace of God,” Joyce said, “he let me go.”

He said Blose told him to tell the guards he was feeling suicidal so he’d be removed from the cell. Instead, Joyce reported the attack and was taken to Jefferson Einstein Montgomery Hospital for treatment.

At the time, Blose was serving a 3½- to seven-year sentence after being convicted of firearms violations in September 2020.

The charges stemmed from an incident in October 2019, when Blose was admitted to the emergency room at St. Luke’s Miners Memorial Hospital in Coaldale, Schuylkill County, according to court records. A doctor at the hospital found that Blose was carrying a loaded handgun while examining him.

Police came to arrest Blose when they found he did not have a permit to carry the weapon, and Blose headbutted and injured one of the officers while trying to fight him off.

Two days after strangling Joyce, prosecutors say Blose attacked his new cellmate. But that man, Shaun Harden, was unable to fight him off, they said.

Guards found Harden, of Nemacolin, Greene County, face down and covered with a bedsheet during an early-morning check of his cell on Nov. 1. His skin was gray, and he had blood on his face, with more pooled beneath him, according to investigators.

Efforts to revive Harden, 45, were unsuccessful, and he was later pronounced dead by a prison doctor. An autopsy revealed that Harden had hemorrhages on his neck, chest, and back, and his cause of death was ruled to be “multiple injuries.”

Harden had been transferred to SCI Phoenix hours before his death from another state prison where he had been serving a four- to eight-year sentence for molesting an 11-year-old girl and two boys, 11 and 12.

Blose’s trial in the attack on Joyce is expected to conclude Wednesday before Montgomery County Court Judge Thomas DelRicci.