Emergency service workers scaled the Williamsburg Bridge and dramatically rescued a despondent man who wanted to take a death dive at 2:20 p.m., police said.
“Tell my mother I love her,” the desperate 39-year-old said from his narrow perch. Harnessed officers gently attempted to coax the man off of the beam, a frightening 80 feet above Berry Street, but wound up cuffing him and carrying him back to safety when his plunge seemed imminent, police said.
“Get back, get back, get back,” the jilted jumper repeatedly warned.
Dramatic photos capture the incredible rescue – and the Manhattan man planting his feet on thin beam on the Brooklyn side of the span, reclining with his arms outstretched and clinging by just his fingertips to a chicken wire fence.
A heart-stopping moment as the man slips while being rescued. (theodore parisienne)
Safe! Cops escort the disturbed man off the bridge. (Theodore Parisienne)
“We were attempting to talk to him to put his arm to the fence,” said rescuer Detective Joseph Fermaint, of Staten Island’s Emergency Services Unit. “It looked like he was about to jump.”
Once the crazed man, dressed casually in a black T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots, sat down on the ledge, Fermaint and Brooklyn ESU Detective Matthew Sproul moved in, they said.
They had tried to talk him out of suicide for three hours, they said.
Child care issues drove the man to the suicide attempt, cops said.
The sullen man had climbed over the pedestrian walkway earlier in the day and cut a hole in a chicken wire fence to step onto the unprotected beam, cops said.
Worried callers began phoning 911 at 11:17 a.m., sources said.