Santa Ana Officers Thwart Suicide Leap Onto I-5 Freeway

Two Santa Ana police officers clutched a struggling, suicidal man by the seat of his pants as he dangled over the side of a freeway overpass until other officers could help pull the man to safety, authorities said Tuesday.

Sgt. Brian Collins, Officer Chuck Lipton and dispatcher Patricia Cotton were credited with preventing the 27-year-old Tustin man from leaping more than 50 feet to his death Monday night and may receive commendations for their quick-thinking efforts, a police spokesman said.

Only five minutes elapsed from the time Fredrico Lambert called the police station, then dropped the receiver, to the moment that Collins, Lipton and other officers tugged him from the freeway overpass, the trio said.

Police said Lambert dialed 911 at 9:48 p.m. and reached Cotton at the Santa Ana police station.

“He said, ‘I can’t go on living. I just can’t take it anymore. I’m going to kill myself,’ ” Cotton, senior police service dispatcher, recalled Tuesday. “He said he was going to jump off a bridge. I tried to keep him on the phone as long as I could . . . but the phone dropped. Fortunately, he called on 911.”

By design, 911 emergency lines are hooked up to computers in the police dispatch center that flash the address of the caller. Cotton’s screen showed Lambert was calling from 1600 East 1st Street. Knowing that the Saddleback Inn is very close to that address, she checked the screen to see if he was calling from inside. He was not.

She decided that he was probably going to jump from the 1st Street overpass to the Santa Ana Freeway, which is just a short block away from the inn. She dispatched officers Donald Bray and Ed DeMarco to the scene.

“We were very lucky to have them real close by,” Cotton said.

The officers arrived and found the man perched on the outside of the bridge railing, clinging to it with his back to the oncoming traffic on the freeway below, and threatening to jump, police said. Officer Dennis Bannon, a graveyard shift officer working overtime, also heard the call.

Bannon got on the southbound I-5 freeway at 17th Street and began slowing traffic as it approached the 1st Street bridge. Near 4th Street, Bannon got out of his patrol car and waved traffic toward the off-ramp.

Meanwhile, Bray and DeMarco parked their units on the east side of the bridge and then waited, about 100 feet from Lambert, for their sergeant to arrive. Sgt. Collins pulled up moments later and found the man on the bridge looking “agitated.” Lipton also arrived and parked his car on an off-ramp to keep traffic away from the bridge.

“I walked up toward him in the street, and kept trying to talk to him,” Collins said. “Why did he want to jump? He looked like he was a little spaced out.”

When he got within 10 feet of the man, Collins said, he began speaking louder, but Lambert inched away from him along the bridge railing. Collins and Lipton, who by then had reached the other side of the bridge, closed in on the man and finally got within three feet of him, they said.

Other officers began stopping freeway traffic below the overpass. Lambert frantically looked back and forth at them.

Collins, in a raised voice, got Lambert’s attention long enough for Lipton to grab for the 200-pound man.

“I couldn’t tell if he was trying to regain his foothold (on the ledge) or trying to jump. I reached down and grabbed him by the seat of the pants,” Lipton said.

“We got him leveraged against the rail” and clung to his clothing for the few moments it took other officers to run to their aid, Collins said. The whole episode on the bridge was over in no more than two minutes, he added.

“It was all adrenalin,” said Lipton, who stands 5 feet, 8 inches and weighs 160 pounds, in describing how the officers kept their footing while hanging onto Lambert.

Lambert, casually dressed but shirtless beneath a jacket, was taken to a nearby hospital, where he is being held under a 72-hour psychiatric observation, police said.

Collins said tests showed no sign of alcohol or drugs in Lambert’s system.

On Tuesday, Collins and Lipton returned to the bridge, describing for a reporter the events of the night before.

“Hey, there’s his shoe!” Lipton said, pointing it out on a freeway lane below.

Looking down, Collins said, “I don’t remember it being this high.”