Attempting Suicide in Atlanta Has Become a Very Public Affair

On a warm evening in April, while thousands of Braves fans were trying to get into the city and tens of thousands of suburban commuters were trying to get out, a despondent 32-year-old man climbed to the top of a road sign, swaying high over the speeding Expressway traffic.

Then he hesitated.

By the time Dorian Heard surrendered to police, the incident had caused a two-mile-long, three-hour traffic jam in downtown Atlanta -- one that cost $2.7 million in time and labor lost by motorists, according to estimates by the Georgia Department of Transportation. While police tried to negotiate with the man, angry motorists yelled at him from below.

If police thought the crisis was over that evening, they were mistaken. In the 3 1/2 months since, eight more men have climbed onto overpasses around Atlanta, contemplating suicide. Two have fallen to the roadway and died; others negotiated with police, sometimes for hours, while camera crews swarmed.

Police brought charges against two of the men once they were removed to safety -- one for obstructing an officer and reckless conduct, because of the danger his act posed to motorists and police, another for reckless conduct and child endangerment, because his 6-year-old son was sitting on the bridge when he climbed to the edge.

The high-profile suicide attempts have taken on the air of a contagion -- so much so that police have pleaded with local media outlets to stop extensive coverage, which they say is fueling a copy-cat syndrome. Others say they hope the incidents will draw attention to the mental suffering that goes unaddressed and untreated in this up-and-coming city.

“I’ve been in Atlanta since 1992, and since then I’ve never seen anything like this” series of suicide threats, said Dr. Patrice Harris, a psychiatrist who works with juvenile offenders. “I think there is an increased sense of hopelessness.”

Keeping the incidents off the nightly news is a challenge in a city obsessed with its highways.

As newcomers move into spacious homes in Atlanta’s outlying suburbs, the time it takes workers to commute has doubled and tripled. Two years ago, the Chamber of Commerce declared that traffic congestion in the city -- which boosters long have claimed has no natural barriers to growth -- was “the greatest threat to Atlanta’s continued prosperity.”

Frustration over traffic delays has had a direct effect on this summer’s suicide attempts, building tension. Lt. Trudy Boyce, a negotiator who works extensively with the mentally ill, recalled hearing motorists yell “Jump!” as she talked with Heard.

A more damaging influence, according to police, is the media coverage. On June 15 -- a day when two men threatened to jump off overpasses in separate locations -- one of them, Marion Anthony, motioned to television crews as he stood on the edge of a bridge. Police later said Anthony suffered from mental illness.

“He was waving at them,” said Bert Brantley, spokesman for the Georgia Department of Transportation. “It’s reasonable to suggest that [media attention] is part of what’s driving this.”

Although officials have not released the names of all the potential jumpers, the five who have been identified are men in their 20s or 30s who complained of job loss, domestic disputes or drug addiction.

Heard’s wife had thrown him out of the house because of drug use on April 7, a day before his suicide attempt, she told authorities.

On May 27, a 26-year-old man named Gregory Light sat his 6-year-old son, Josh, on a nearby curb and climbed outside the railing over Interstate 75. He told police he “was out of work and had failed everything he had tried,” according to police reports. When officers tried to grab him, Light struggled against them and fell 30 feet to the highway; he broke several bones but survived.

Dr. Steven Garlow, an Emory University psychiatrist, said the suicide threats were impulsive acts by people facing difficulties in their lives. And they do not fall into a normal pattern for this city. Garlow ascribed the increase to reports of other jumpers circulating through the media.

“Are reporters making it worse? Yeah,” he said. Potential jumpers are “clearly people who are in a lot of distress and despair to get up on the railing. Then they have second thoughts about it.

“Inevitably, they’re doing this in response to something, some loss, some setback. And suddenly, they are getting a lot of attention.”

Alerted to the presence of a potential jumper, police have used negotiation as their primary response, but also brought in inflatable cushions and 18-wheelers in an effort to break the person’s fall. As part of a long-standing project, the Department of Transportation has been installing fences on overpasses, Brantley said. He added, however, that all but one of the men have climbed over fences to the edge.

“There’s not much we can do, short of building them 20 or 30 feet high or posting officers at the end of each bridge,” he said.

An Atlanta police officer, Boyce said, is likely to encounter a mentally ill person every day. Since authorities emptied state mental hospitals in the 1980s, she said, police have found themselves dealing with seriously ill people on the street. And in Atlanta, the number goes up in the summer, when heat often interacts with psychiatric medication, she said.

Officer Dale Davis of the DeKalb County police said he hoped that motorists would hide their frustration if there were further incidents. Two men tried to jump off overpasses in the county in the last month: One was taken into custody; the other fell onto the roadway, was struck by vehicles and died.

Davis said he was disturbed by the impatience of motorists held up in traffic as police tried to talk individuals out of suicide.

“There’s no empathy, no sympathy, no nothing,” Davis said. “Just, ‘Get out of my way, let me get on with my life.’ ”

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Times researcher Rennie Sloan contributed to this report.