15-year-old student who left a suicide note is safe after ordeal
By Michael A. Fuoco
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2007 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh Paramedic Jack Glass has no formal training in crisis negotiation but he had what it took yesterday when he coaxed a distraught 15-year-old girl from a fourth-story ledge at Allderdice High School after she threatened in a note to take her life.
Played out under sunny, blue skies, the 35-minute drama in Squirrel Hill ended as Mr. Glass reached out for the freshman girl and she for him. Mr. Glass carefully guided the girl back through the ladies’ room window she had exited earlier.
Safe once more, she and Mr. Glass embraced.
“There were a lot of happy hugs and tears,” the Lincoln Place resident recounted.
The girl, who for years has been in treatment for mental health issues, was debriefed by authorities and reunited with a half dozen family members, including her mother and grandmother, who had been brought to the school. And then, as is standard procedure in such incidents, she was taken to Western Psychiatric Institute & Clinic.
Authorities said the incident began at 1:26 p.m. with a 911 call reporting a student on a fourth-floor ledge threatening to jump. It is unclear when, but at some point a note was found in the school in which the girl wrote she was going to end her life and that she loved everyone, even her enemies.
The girl had climbed out of a ladies’ room window and shuffled several feet along the foot-wide cement ledge to a corner where the building juts out. There she stood, her back rigid, her palms pressed against the wall.
School District Police Chief Robert Fadzen was alerted and while en route, ordered the school locked down with its 1,630 students kept in their seventh-period classes. Additionally, he ordered windows and blinds closed in the back of the building, parallel to Tilbury Avenue, where the incident was taking place.
Mr. Glass and his Rescue 1 unit were on Shady Avenue when they heard the call. In a minute or less they were at the school, the first responder to arrive. A school official briefed the paramedics and Mr. Glass hustled to the fourth-floor restroom. There he was joined by substitute teacher Arthur Harris, who assisted in talking to the girl.
Mr. Glass is untrained but he has talked down would-be jumpers from bridges during his 29 years as a paramedic. He knew he needed to establish a rapport with the girl and realized he had something to build upon because his son and daughter attend the school.
“She knew my son, so I told her, ‘Next time you see Andy, tell him we met,’ ” Mr. Glass said. “That got a smile from her.”
He asked her how old she was, how many siblings she had, how long she had been at Allderdice, where she lived. And he asked if he could hold her hand. She agreed and they grasped each other. Not once did she say she wanted to jump or why she was on the ledge, Mr. Glass said.
Every now and then she would let go of his hand. Mr. Glass became worried because her posture, once ramrod straight against the wall, appeared to be sagging.
“She was very distressed but she also was becoming very tired. She wasn’t as rigid, she was sliding down the wall. I could see her eyes were becoming listless,” Mr. Glass said.
As Mr. Glass was engaging the girl in conversation, Pittsburgh Police Sgt. Ronald Griffin, a trained negotiator, was inside the school, studying the note and getting other information about her in preparation for taking over the negotiating.
About a half hour into the crisis, the girl began to move toward the window but had second thoughts and moved back. After another five minutes of conversation, she said she wanted to see her mother.
“If you do something for me, I can do something for you,” Mr. Glass gently told her. “Come in for me and I promise you’ll see your mother.” The girl said OK, reached to Mr. Glass and slowly moved toward safety.
Chief Fadzen couldn’t say enough about Mr. Glass’s actions.
“I think if he’s not there, we may have lost her,” he offered. “That little girl is alive because of him, because of his expertise, his calmness.”