Man Talked Out of Suicide Jump

A 25-year-old unemployed Long Beach man, who clung to a narrow ledge of the Lakewood Boulevard overpass of the San Diego Freeway threatening to jump, caused the closure of the busy northbound lanes for three hours during the Friday night rush hour until a friend talked him down, authorities reported.

Police said the man identified only as “Mark” was under the influence of amphetamines and had ridden his bicycle to the scene.

The sound of steadily honking horns on the freeway was replaced with silence in the northbound lanes through Long Beach as motorists were directed to nearby surface streets, creating a massive secondary traffic jam on those thoroughfares.

The overpass is about 30 feet above the freeway, and the man remained nearly motionless as he clung to the narrow ledge on the outside of the guard rail.

A spectator, Jim Backstead of Long Beach, said, “It’s really eerie. Usually at this time on a Friday, it’s just a sea of lights, but tonight the northbound lanes are empty and dark, and the south lanes are a mass of lights.”

A county Department of Health Services psychiatric technician, Ken Hairston, who talked to the man, said, “The drug influenced his mental capacity . . . at times he was incoherent.”

After Mark’s friend, Ray Barlow, 29, persuaded him to come down, police took the man to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center where they said he will be kept for a 72-hour psychiatric observation.

“He is a friend of mine,” Barlow said, “I told him that I love him” before he finally came down.

Barlow’s wife, Barbara, said Mark “just does side jobs.”

“Mark would only speak to Ray. If he had problems, he would always come to us,” she said.

Long Beach Police Sgt. Soren Poulsen said, “He was in control of the situation. We had no control over his actions.”