This one comes under the category, "ooops, I hate when that happens".
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Man Plans Bridge Jump, Reconsiders, Falls
AP
CHARLESTON, S.C. (Oct. 16) - A man threatened to jump, then asked for help and survived a fall from the Arthur Ravenel Bridge - a drop of about 20 stories.
Authorities said the man, whose name was not released, stopped his car and climbed over the 7-foot railing on the edge of the bridge sidewalk about 2 p.m. Sunday.
Negotiators tried to talk the man off the ledge during the four-hour incident.
"He never said he wanted to come back," said the Rev. Rob Dewey, a police chaplain with the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy. "By the time he agreed to let us help him, he was holding on only by his fingertips."
As he hung there, the man looked up and said, "I need help," Dewey said.
Rescue workers were waiting about 30 feet away and were motioned in, said Lt. Sean Carroll of the Mount Pleasant Fire Department.
"By the time we could get to the edges of the railings he was just holding on by the first joints in his fingers," he said. "We tried to lay hands on him but at that point he fell."
The man, identified only as a 21-year-old man from Andrews, fell about 200 feet to the Cooper River.
He was rescued from the water and given first aid. Dewey said he visited the man in the hospital Sunday night and he appeared "to be doing OK."
It was the first fall from the bridge since the span, the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America, opened in July of last year.
Authorities closed all four northbound lanes on U.S. Highway 17, which crosses the bridge linking Charleston and Mount Pleasant.
The closing caused an extensive traffic jam and vehicles were rerouted to the Interstate 526 bridge farther north. |
