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Photos: Suicide Attempt On The Williamsburg Bridge
By
Garth Johnston
Published May 22, 2011
Modified May 22, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published May 22, 2011
Modified May 22, 2011
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Yesterday, a despondent 39-year-old man from Midtown who tried to take his life on the Williamsburg Bridge was saved by NYPD officers. They spent nearly three hours talking him down before finally handcuffing him and pulling him through a hole they cut in the fence. Witness Drew Catlin described the ordeal on Facebook: "Hours of watching. Far too many children. Far too much laughing. Only one asshole yelled jump, and only once."
Witnesses first called 911 around 11:15 a.m. to report that a man had climbed the south side of the fence on the pedestrian walkway on the Brooklyn side of the bridge, and appeared ready to jump. The NYPD quickly had its Emergency Service Unit on the scene, and two detectives scaled the fence ("which the police described as having the consistency of chicken wire") but the man told them he would jump if they got any closer.
"We were attempting to talk to him to put his arm to the fence," rescuer Detective Joseph Fermaint recounted to the Post. "It looked like he was about to jump."
Eventually, around 2:20 p.m., the increasingly worried officers grabbed the man, handcuffed him and pulled him through a cut in the bridge's fencing they had made. According to Catlin, "When the cops had their arms around him he fought for what seemed like forever but was really no more than a minute, maybe two." The man's distress, which closed the bridge's outer roadway for hours, appeared to stem from childcare issues, not the delayed rapture.
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Suicide attempt
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Garth Johnston
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