A suicidal man with a towel duct taped over his face and claiming to be from outer space scaled the Brooklyn Bridge Thursday before police managed to wrestle him down and take him into custody.
Drivers and pedestrians spotted the emotionally disturbed individual making his way up the bridge’s steel frame at around 1:40 p.m. before perching himself atop a stress beam 20 feet above the Brooklyn bound roadway, authorities said.
Emergency Services Unit detectives James Coll, Sean Mulcahy, Michael Cook and Kimberly Zarrilli, strapped themselves into harnesses and made their way up to the man’s location on the south side of the Brooklyn end of the bridge and surrounded him.
“He said he was an alien from outer space,” Coll said, adding that one of the officers replied by asking, “What brings you to Brooklyn?”
The officers then proceeded to engage the unidentified man in an intense conversation that lasted around 20 minutes.
“He said he’s having a bad day and a bad life and he’s had it,” Coll said. “He started crying and we were trying to empathize with him.”
At times, the officers grew concerned that the man may decide to leap off the bridge before as they were trying to earn his trust.
“We were a little worried when he turned his legs to the outside [of the bridge], but then he put his legs back in,” said detective Mulcahy. “That was a good time to take him into custody.”
The cops then pounced on the man, who put up a fight before finally being cuffed and taken into custody.
He was taken to Woodhull Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
“Once he was in custody he said, ‘I wish I had ended my life,’” Mulcahy said. “He’s still emotionally distraught.”