Saves Woman’s Life, Then Steals Purse, Police Say : Good Samaritan With Feet of Clay

The way Los Angeles police tell it, Miguel Garcia was both a Good Samaritan and a not-so-good thief.

Garcia, 35, was credited by authorities with pulling a suicidal woman away from the edge of a bridge in Van Nuys on Tuesday night. But then he tried to run off with her purse, police said.

The not-so-good deed landed Garcia in the Van Nuys jail overnight on suspicion of robbery. He almost became a free man Wednesday when the woman he saved refused to press charges, but was kept in custody when detectives learned he is an illegal alien from Mexico, Detective Rockey Kennedy said.

“It’s a confusing mess,” Kennedy said.

It all started at 10:20 p.m. Tuesday on the Victory Boulevard bridge over the Tujunga Wash. According to detectives, a 23-year-old Sunland woman was distraught because she had gotten drunk after a long period of abstention from alcohol. She walked to the edge of the bridge, more than 30 feet above the concrete drainage wash at its midpoint, and was intending to jump when Garcia came along, police said.

Garcia wrestled with the woman and managed to pull her away from the guardrail, Kennedy said. The woman, who was not identified, passed out after a short struggle and Garcia dragged her away from the wash, the detective said.

Police said that three men who witnessed the struggle told them that Garcia, who also appeared to have been drinking, then picked up the woman’s purse and ran off.

The three witnesses chased him down, however, and held him until police arrived.

“Garcia tried to save her life and then it turned into a fiasco,” Kennedy said. “But he is no hard-core robber.”

The purse, it turned out, contained no money, Kennedy said.

Although the woman signed a crime report Tuesday night, she declined to press charges Wednesday morning.

“She feels he saved her life and doesn’t want to prosecute him,” Detective Richard Schauer said.

Garcia will be turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, police said.