PROVIDENCE — A prisoner being treated at Rhode Island Hospital attempted to escape Wednesday night after a guard allowed him to use the bathroom, state corrections officials reported.

Joseph T. Lee, 36, of Pawtucket, was wearing leg shackles when he asked a correctional officer to use the bathroom, and then emerged brandishing a towel rod he had pulled from the wall, said state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Tracey Z. Poole. The officer, who had been waiting outside the bathroom, drew his service revolver but didn’t fire, according to a department statement. Lee attempted to flee through a locked door on the first floor, the statement said.

Responding to the officer’s call for backup, correctional officers from the Intake Service Center, Rhode Island Hospital security officers and Providence police officers arrived at the scene. Lee was “safely returned to his room and no one was injured in the incident,” the statement says.

“The good sense of the correctional officer, and swift backup by security personnel, thwarted what could have been a very dangerous situation,” said a statement released by the correctional officers’ union, the Rhode Island Brotherhood of Correctional Officers.

Lee, who had 21 days remaining on a 60-day sentence for vandalism, was admitted to the hospital Feb.22, Poole said. Privacy laws prohibit the department from discussing the reason for Lee’s hospitalization, she said, but she confirmed that it wasn’t related to any injury suffered at the ACI.

larditi@projo.com