PORT ANGELES — Family members worked together to help save a woman they believed was considering taking her life in a leap from one of the two Eighth Street bridges.
John Ferretti, 49, and wife Rebecca Jolley, daughter Karah Houk and son-in-law Josh Houk, all of Port Angeles, were driving home on Eighth Street at 3:20 p.m. Monday.
They were nearly across the Tumwater Truck Route bridge when Josh heard a woman yelling, Karah said.
“Josh looked back and saw her leaning over the railing,” Karah said, describing the yell as a cross between a scream and a cry.
“It was the sound of a person in need of help,” she said.
Karah said she looked back and at the “bump-out” on the bridge, a woman she thought to be between 30 and 40 years old was standing at the railing, looking over and “scream-crying.”
Ferretti turned the truck around to go back onto the bridge as Josh kept an eye on the woman and Jolley phoned 9-1-1, she said.
He parked the truck in the bicycle lane by the bump-out and jumped out.
“I went out and talked to her, asked if she needed any help,” Ferretti said.
She was crying, he said.
“I put my arm over her shoulder,” he said. “I had to stall her until the police got there.”
Port Angeles police officers determined the woman required mental health treatment and took her for evaluation to Olympic Medical Center, where she was held for treatment, Deputy Chief Brian Smith said Tuesday.
Smith said he did not know the woman’s status as of Tuesday afternoon.
Ferretti was a paramedic in training in Sacramento, Calif., when he was in an accident that injured his legs, permanently disabling him and ending his potential career, he said.
However, he has never stopped trying to help people, he added.
“I help where I can. It’s just the way I was raised,” he said.
He said he continued talking to the woman, who has not been identified, until police arrived.
Ferretti said police came very quickly.
Officers Bruce Fernie and Mike Johnson and Sgt. Glenn Roggenbuck were on the scene within two minutes, according to police logs.
This was the second “good Samaritan” act this year that interrupted a potential suicide attempt on the bridge.
In April, Tammy Gregory, 44, of Port Angeles stopped to talk to a teenage girl who she believed looked like she might harm herself.
She talked to the girl for about four minutes while waiting for police to arrive, sharing her similar experiences in suffering with the distraught girl.
Police later confirmed the 16-year-old girl had been considering jumping from the bridge.
Port Angeles has had several suicides from the two bridges, which were renovated and reopened in 2009.
The bridges have 4-foot-6-inch wall railings and stand 100 feet above the Valley Creek and Tumwater Truck Route gorges.
A 76-year-old woman leaped from the Tumwater bridge in March, and a 21-year-old woman fell to her death from the nearby Valley Creek Bridge last October.
In all, police report four deaths by suicide from the Eighth Street bridges since they were reopened.
The wide, modern bridges lack the high barriers that were a refit feature on the 1936 bridges they replaced.
In addition to the deaths, police have had 23 reports of possible suicidal individuals at or within a block of the bridges since the spans were built.
Many of those reports did not represent actual suicidal people but may have represented a person who was reported as acting suspiciously or were reports of a threat regarding the bridges, Smith has said.
In many cases, police did not locate anyone on or near the bridges, or the people who were reported were sightseeing, he has said.
In the wake of the two recent deaths, residents called for higher barriers to be placed on the sides of the Eighth Street bridges or safety nets to catch those who attempt to jump.
The city has placed signs at either end of the bridge with phone numbers for mental health treatment.
On April 21, urged by Councilwoman Cherie Kidd, the City Council approved an effort to seek grant funding to construct barriers.
Others have urged improved mental health care to reduce the need for barriers.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
