Last night PI photographer Josh Trujillo, a former colleague of our Fremont Universe site editor Athima Chansanchai, saw a woman hop a rail on the Aurora Bridge in an attempt to jump. Josh called 911, and then began tweeting live about it, confronting the question of whether or not the media should cover suicides and attempts. Athima wrote,
Reading his tweets this morning, the story ends without tragedy at about 9:30 p.m.: “Good news. Young girl on Aurora Bridge is over the rail, back on the safe side. Police boats leaving from under bridge. Amen.”
His tweets about her began about 13 hours ago, about 7:30 p.m.: “No. A girl is on the Aurora Bridge about to jump. My heart is sinking. Police not here yet.”
I know Josh, so I know how sincere he is, so I don’t question how hard this must have been for him. This is a guy who was in the Army and deployed overseas before he was a photographer. He’s a consummate professional and he’s also a family man.
The irony is, the state is installing an anti-suicide fence on the bridge, and have been for a while.
While Josh was watching—and tweeting—as events unraveled, he witnessed another onlooker, a woman on the Fremont Bridge who said she’d been waiting in traffic for an hour, say loudly that the girl should “jump already.”
He also wrote that he felt “uncomfortable tweeting this one. This is awful.”
Another tweet: “FYI, I used to live under the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge. A jumper once landed in my yard. That was a terrible day. Hope today is better.”
Read Athima’s full story here. And tell us what you think about it.