Amazing Bridge Rescue in Green Bay, WI

[pojo]

Officers save Green Bay woman from suicidal leap off bridge

Wristhold keeps her on Leo Frigo bridge
By Andy Nelesen
anelesen@greenbaypressgazette.com

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/new ... ndex.shtml (to watch the rescue video from the police officers car)


GREEN BAY — A dramatic last-second grab by State Trooper Les Boldt on Monday kept a 36-year-old Green Bay woman from plunging to a near-certain death from the towering Interstate 43 span over the Fox River.

As the suicidal woman lunged head first over the concrete barrier at the side of the freeway, Boldt grabbed her right arm and hung on with both hands. Both of their lives hung in the balance — 200 feet above the river.

“When I first got a hold of her, she went over and my feet slipped a little bit and I squatted down and stuck my knees into the barrier,” Boldt said in an interview with the Press-Gazette Monday afternoon. “I’m glad the (road) shoulders were as clean as they were. With the little bit of gravel that was up there, my feet were kind of sliding. I had to hunker down so I didn’t get pulled over myself.”

The dramatic rescue around 10 a.m. was captured by the Wisconsin State Patrol trooper’s in-car video camera. The tape shows Boldt’s feet leaving the ground as he lunged for the woman.

After hanging on for 16 seconds, Boldt, 34, was joined by Brown County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bill Morgan, who grabbed the woman’s other arm, and then deputy Kevin Kinnard, who helped Boldt and Morgan hoist the woman back over the wall.

Authorities said the woman was suffering from postpartum depression. She met with her mother-in-law earlier in the day and said things that made her family believe she might be suicidal. The woman’s husband was trying to find her, spotted her white Oldsmobile near Wisconsin 29 and U.S. 41 and called 911.

The woman drove onto U.S. 41 as a description of her car went out over police radios. Dispatchers asked law enforcement officers to find the car and check the woman’s welfare.

Boldt went looking for the car on U.S. 41 and saw it just south of the ramp to Interstate 43. He watched as the woman’s car veered across several lanes of traffic and turn to go south on I-43. With lights flashing and siren wailing, Boldt gave chase. Speeds reached 105 mph.

Boldt followed the woman’s car to the top of the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge, some 200 feet above the mouth of the Fox River. He watched the woman get out of her car, close the door and start walking toward the inland edge.

“She’s suicidal and she’s getting out of her car … there’s only one reason she’s heading that direction,” Boldt said. “One reason and one reason only.”

“I’m like, ‘I’ve gotta get there before she gets to the edge.’ She beat me to the edge, but I managed to grab a hold of her arm as she was going over the top.”

The woman’s fall was jolted by a blue steel bridge support just below the concrete barrier.

“She probably didn’t even know it was there,” Boldt said. “If that beam wouldn’t have been there, I don’t think I would have been able to hold her. She hit that beam, and it stopped some of her momentum.”

But after Boldt had hold of the woman, it wasn’t over. In an apparent depression-fueled rage, the woman fought with Boldt, pulling away from the edge and clawing at his grip on her wrist.

“When I am pulling on her, she’s screaming … and she’s pulling, she’s pulling back and she’s fighting,” Boldt said. “It’s a tug-of-war, and I’m glad that I was bigger than she was.

“I probably hurt her wrist.”

But Boldt had only one thing on his mind: hanging on until more help arrived.

“I’m not lettin’ go,” Boldt said. “‘I’ve got you and I am trying to pull her back. That’s all I’m thinking. ‘Get her back on this side. Hold on to her and don’t let her drop.’”

Morgan, a 30-year sheriff’s department veteran, saw only Boldt looking over the edge when he raced to the top of the bridge. He initially thought the woman had fallen.

“Then I saw only her wrist sticking up, and Les is holding onto it,” Morgan said. “He was holding on, and she was fighting with him.”

Morgan, who confesses a fear of heights, reached over the barrier and grabbed the woman’s free arm. He held tight until more help arrived. Once Kinnard joined the effort, the three men lifted the woman over the barrier, held her down, handcuffed her and waited for an ambulance.

She was treated at Aurora BayCare Medical Center. Her condition was not known late Monday, but she had no significant injuries from her time on the bridge.

Boldt’s arms were marked with long red scratches from his tangle with the concrete barrier, and his uniform was scuffed and ripped from friction with the bridge.

Hours after the event — and after several viewings of the video from his in-car camera — Boldt, a seven-year State Patrol veteran, said it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

“This has been the most eventful day I’ve ever had,” he said. “Nothing has even come close.”

[Josephine96]

I saw that video earlier.. Glad the woman and the officer are OK..