A suburban dad cycling back to New Jersey over the George Washington Bridge stopped a man from jumping to his death from the span, sources said Wednesday.
“I was riding across the bridge and I saw this guy trying to climb over the rail,” Ben Storch, 38, told The Post of his harrowing experience at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
“It was pretty clear to me that he was trying to jump off,” said Storch, a father of two who works in the insurance business and was headed to his home in Haworth, NJ.
Storch jumped off his 10-speed and yelled to the man — identified as Garrett J. O’Keefe, 67, of Union City — but got no response.
The 6-foot-1, 200-pound Storch grabbed O’Keefe’s right arm — and refused to let go as O’Keefe struggled to break free.
“At one point, I said to him, ‘I’m not going to let go and stop pulling!’ ” he noted.
A pedestrian and another cyclist called 911.
O’Keefe, who began to show signs of a drug overdose, was taken to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and held for psychiatric evaluation.
Storch said he was just happy that O’Keefe “now has a second chance.”