VALLEY VIEW, Ohio (AP) -- A woman sitting on the edge of a bridge closed her eyes, made the sign of the cross and leaned toward a fall. Two police officers rushed to her rescue and kept her from going over.
A third officer, Valley View police Capt. Mark Sierleja, who had been quietly negotiating with the woman for three hours, breathed a huge sigh and rushed to help.
“I would have felt it was my fault if she had done it,” said Sierleja, who specializes in talking people out of suicide. “That’s why I hate doing this. It’s so gut-wrenching.”
The encounter occurred on a bridge on Ohio 82 in Brecksville, a Cleveland suburb, about four years ago on a cold February day.
Over the last 20 years, Sierleja has saved about six lives. He is one of a few such specialists among police departments throughout Cuyahoga County who have been trained for suicide intervention.
Sometimes, they never get a chance to intervene, as in a recent case in which a man stopped his car on the Interstate 480 bridge over Valley View and, without a moment’s hesitation, jumped.
Sierleja said about 20 people have jumped off the bridge since it opened in the late 1970s.
Despite the training, Sierleja said, it’s always difficult to prepare for a suicide call.
“It’s like walking into a china shop backwards, wearing a blindfold,” he said. “You never know what to say until you get there.”
This month, Cleveland police negotiators found the right words to say when they talked a man out of jumping off the Detroit-Superior (Veterans Memorial) Bridge in downtown Cleveland.
The 46-year-old man, troubled over a relationship, had climbed to the top of the steel arches, hundreds of feet above the Cuyahoga River.
Cleveland police negotiators, Detective Richard Euretig and Sgt. Larry Hughes, talked to him for an hour and a half, finally persuading him to climb down.
“The first thing you try to do is gain his trust,” said Commander Jeffrey Martin of Cleveland’s Bureau of Special Services. “Once you establish dialogue and trust, you try to relate to him how his actions are affecting others.
“You tell him, ‘Your problems might end, but they will just begin for the people who care about you and love you,”’ Martin said.
Suicide is the eighth-leading cause of death in the United States. Among teenagers, it’s the third-leading cause.
It’s a common belief that the suicide rate goes up around the holidays. But experts say it’s higher in the spring.
“Spring is a hopeful time, and if you’re suffering from severe depression, that hope is not happening for you,” said Catherine Ferrer, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, a nonprofit education and research group. “People don’t want to die. They want the pain to go away. And if there is some way to get through to them that there is hope, that’s the key.”
Sierleja, who has received awards for his work, said people rarely thank negotiators for saving them. Only once did he get a thank-you note, and it was from a family member, not the person he saved.
“They want to forget about it and put it behind them,” he said. “They want to get on with their lives.”