Emily Miller
Sun Sentinel
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — As a man rocked back and forth on the edge of a concrete ledge above Interstate 95, his legs dangling above traffic, two Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies swooped in and pulled him to safety.
The two-minute rescue began at 11:20 p.m. Monday along the Andrews Avenue bridge over I-95. Sgt. Bryan Nord, 40, and Deputy Jonathan Vazquez, 33, worked together to save the man, who had been unresponsive and slowly inched his way closer to the edge of the small ledge as the deputies neared.
“Right when we got there, we thought he was going to jump,” Nord said. “He was sitting on the edge with his legs hanging over the side. He looked at me a couple of times. He just had a blank stare.”
Nord called for deputies to close the southbound lanes of I-95 in case the man decided to jump. Then he tried to talk the man off of the ledge.
“Whenever he would look away from me, I would take a few steps closer, and when he would look at me, I would stop walking,” Nord said.
The man began rocking back and forth while watching the traffic as if he was trying to time when to jump, Nord said.
“We could tell he wasn’t playing,” Vazquez said. “It really, really appeared that he had made up his mind.”
Nord signaled to Vazquez that it was time to intervene and the two quickly pulled the man backward onto the sidewalk.
“It felt like he was kind of relieved that he didn’t have to make the decision himself,” Nord said of the man. “Finally he said, ‘I just don’t want to live anymore.’”
The man told Nord and Vazquez that he had been released from a Palm Beach hospital earlier that day after undergoing a medical health evaluation. He said he took a bus to the nearby Tri-Rail station, then walked to the bridge.
Nord said the man, who had been carrying medication, said he recently lost his job and his insurance and was an alcoholic. He also said he would try to kill himself again and was transported to Imperial Point Hospital for medical health evaluation.
“You take this job to help people,” Nord said. “Sometimes you forget how good it feels.”
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