‘I love you, man’: Richland deputies save man from jumping off bridge

Death was just a lean away for a man who climbed the guardrail of the Parklane Road/S.C. 277 overpass, crying on the phone, ready to jump into traffic.

The man’s wife had left him for another man – and she had taken his son and daughter, he told deputies.

The jumper, a sweaty, thin, 6-foot African-American man dressed in a white muscle shirt, was on the phone with his aunt. He was telling her that he was ready to die, deputies said.

It took strong arms and soft hearts from two Richland County deputies to save his life.

“When I got there, he was screaming frantically, telling her that he couldn’t live any more – he didn’t want to live any more,” Lt. Albert McLendon said Wednesday in retelling the encounter on July 26.

The rescue was captured on dashcam video from the deputy’s patrol vehicle.

McLendon said he had never met the man before. But in the harrowing two minutes it took to get him over the railing and to the safety of the overpass, the deputy forged a life-saving bond with the distraught man.

“I just knew at that point this guy needed to hear that someone cared about him – and it was me, of all people,” McLendon recalled. “I said, ‘Man, I love you, man. I’m not going to let you do this to yourself.’ ”

The two stayed locked like that – the man seated inches away from death as McLendon clutched the man’s belt. The lieutenant managed to radio for help.

McLendon had been patrolling just a couple blocks away from the overpass when the call came in about 2:30 p.m. As he arrived at the location, McLendon jumped from the car, rushed onto the overpass and at first grabbed the man’s arm.

Within sight of the tense incident, David Goff, an investigator, was at the Circle K fueling his unmarked truck when the call came in. He only caught part of it but sprang into action.

When Goff arrived, McLendon was trying to soothe the man. Goff grabbed the jumper in what the investigator described as a bear hug. The two officers lifted him back onto the overpass.

“He was extremely sweaty,” Goff said of the roughly 155-pound man. “It was hard to hold on to him.”

The State newspaper generally does not identify suicidal people.

McLendon, 55, has been with the Sheriff’s Department for 19 years. Goff, 60, has been there 31 years. Both said they have been called to attempted suicides in the course of their careers. But last week’s encounter was the first time they’ve ever been directly responsible for talking down a suicidal person.

After getting the man onto the overpass, they called for an ambulance. But the struggle wasn’t over.

The man told them repeatedly he wasn’t going to go to the hospital despite being already strapped onto a stretcher. He threatened to jump out of the ambulance.

Once again, the deputies talked him down. “I said, ‘Man up. Come on – you’ve got to take care of your kids,’” Goff said. The investigator, at the man’s request, went to the hospital. Neither officer knows what became of the man.

Tensions across the nation between white officers and African-American citizens did not cross the minds of the white deputies who were called to the overpass. “Somebody needed help and that’s what we did,” McLendon said.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 5:50 PM with the headline "‘I love you, man’: Richland deputies save man from jumping off bridge."