Operators pitch in to foil suicide attempt, take two

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It was truckers to the rescue again Monday in Minneapolis as a suicidal man stood poised to jump, hanging onto nothing more than the outside of a chain-link fence at the edge of a 25-foot-high bridge over I-94. A trooper on the scene, Carl Hoffman, took a page from the Tuscaloosa, Ala., police’s handbook and asked the operators of several tractor-dry van rigs that had been stuck in the traffic that backed up around the scene if they would be willing to pull their rigs in line under the bridge to potentially break the man’s long fall should he jump.

TuscaloosatroopersThat’s right — this wouldn’t be the first time we’ve reported on the Channel 19 blog about such an incident, the last being in 2009 when something very similar happened on McFarland Boulevard in Overdrive‘s hometown headquarters of Tuscaloosa (pictured, Tuscaloosa News photo). Read more about that here.

As Trooper Hoffman explains in a video interview on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s website, once they were in place, the man was fortunately pulled back onto the bridge by local firefighters and police.

A dramatic end to a long day.

Read Star-Tribune reporter Paul Walsh’s story (and check out the video report) on the incident here. And if you were one of the drivers involved in the incident, tell us your story in the comments here!