By Glenn Smith
The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.)
The young man plunged toward the Cooper River like a human missile, his stocky body reaching speeds of 70 mph by the time he struck the dark water, completing a 200-foot freefall from the Lowcountry’s tallest bridge.
Landing feet first likely saved the 21-year-old Andrews man from a watery death Sunday. That, and the rescue workers who had waited just out of sight for hours.
Rescuers dived into the water as the man cleaved the river’s surface beside the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. In less than 30 seconds he was aboard a boat and being rushed to a waiting ambulance at the Charleston Maritime Center with relatively minimal injuries.
The rescue ran like clockwork. And that was no accident.
A few years ago, Dr. Ralph Shealy, medical director for the Charleston County Volunteer Rescue Squad, began studying cases of local bridge jumpers, hoping to find ways to save more lives. He examined three years’ worth of autopsy reports and was surprised to find that most jumpers died from drowning, not the injuries they received in the fall, he said.
“It had long been an assumption that people were dying because of the impact with the water,” said Shealy, who also works for Charleston County Emergency Medical Services. “There was an expectation that once a person went over the edge, there was no hope ... and that is just not so.”
In recent years, Shealy’s research led to a new response plan in which boats, divers and swimmers are positioned close to where a jumper is expected to land, enabling rescuers to pluck the person from the water before he or she goes under for good.
Sunday’s episode was the first time the strategy was put to a real-life test.
“It was slick as glass,” Shealy said. “Everything worked beautifully.”
Investigators still don’t know what prompted the man to come to Charleston, scale a nearly 7-foot railing on the bridge and threaten to jump, said Charles Francis, a Charleston police spokesman.
The Rev. Rob Dewey, founder of the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy, worked with police negotiators trying to talk the man down as traffic snarled along the bridge.
“We tried to establish a relationship to find out what was going on and what we could do to be of help to him,” Dewey said. “But he would not communicate with us.”
As the stalemate approached its fourth hour, the man became visibly exhausted from clinging to the railing along the wind-blown span, police said. He eventually slid down the railing and called for help as he dangled over the edge. Police and firefighters rushed to his aid but couldn’t prevent him from falling.
After he was pulled from the water he was rushed to Medical University Hospital, where he was treated for his injuries and committed for a psychiatric evaluation, police said. Hospital officials would not divulge his condition on Monday, and The Post and Courier is not identifying him.
Shealy would not discuss the man’s specific injuries, but he said he remained conscious after the fall. “I told the young man on the boat that there were a lot of people there precisely because they cared about his life,” he said.
James R. Frysinger, physics lab manager at the College of Charleston, said the man’s fall from the bridge likely lasted just a few seconds while subjecting him to “traveling interstate speeds without the benefit of a car or a seat belt.”
“Even if you hit feet-first, you run a real risk of sprained ankles, broken bones and possibly jamming the femur bones out of the hip joints,” said Frysinger, who is also a trained emergency medical technician.
The fall from the Ravenel Bridge is the first since the span opened in July 2005. Those who deal with the suicidal and depressed had expressed fears that the span would attract people seeking to leap from the newest and highest bridge in the region.
More than 50 people jumped or fell from the span’s smaller predecessors, the Silas N. Pearman Bridge and John P. Grace Memorial Bridge. Ten of those people survived.
Many suffered crushing injuries, such as broken necks, fractured ribs and lacerated livers. One woman hit the water with such force that the pattern of her corduroy pants was left imprinted on her skin. Others drowned, too disoriented or injured to swim to safety.
A pedestrian walkway and emergency lanes along the 3.5-mile length of the Ravenel Bridge have provided the public with much greater access than existed on the old bridges. The vertical railing that flanks the walkway and cameras to monitor activity were expected to discourage jumpers, but state Department of Transportation officials acknowledged from the beginning that the measures were hardly foolproof.
DOT officials did not respond to questions Monday about whether new safety measures would be installed as a result of the jump.