By Chris Michaud, New York Post
Nine hero cops teamed up yesterday to save the life of a despondent man dangling from the George Washington Bridge, begging them for help and pleading, “I want to live. Don’t let me go.”
The dramatic, 30-minute rescue began at 6 a.m. when four Port Authority police called to the scene by a bridge maintenance crew spotted the suicidal man hanging by his arms on the outside of the bridge’s south railing near the New Jersey tower - 200 feet above the Hudson River.
“He told us, ‘Please help me, I really don’t want to die. I want to live, don’t let me go,’ ” said Port Authority Police Officer Ray Corbo.
“He was hanging on for dear life.”
Corbo, along with officers Milagros Lopez, Ray Rodriguez and Adrian Graham, tried to calm the terrified would-be jumper, then clutched his arms while Sgt. Richard Keith quickly handcuffed him to the bridge’s railing to prevent him from a fatal plunge into the river.
Rodriguez said the 225-pound man was too heavy to lift over the railing, so the cops held him up, even after they put two sets of handcuffs on him, until NYPD Emergency Services Unit officers arrived with special rescue apparatus.
Lopez said the 27-year-old unidentified Bronx man, who was taken to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital for evaluation, has apparently been laid off and “was walking to clear his head” when he decided to end it all. But he had a change of heart almost immediately, she said.