City firefighters are being credited with saving the life of a suicidal man found with a rope around his neck on the top deck of the Elliot Hospital parking garage Thursday around 2 a.m.
“I looked across the top level, and I saw a man on the other side of the guardrail, on the opposite side of the garage from me,” 16-year veteran Lt. Dan LaBerge said Thursday evening. “I started to move toward him. That’s when I saw something yellow around his neck.”
LaBerge said one end of a yellow rope was around the man’s neck, the other secured to a nearby pole. The man appeared to be leaning slightly forward.
“I knew if I rushed toward him and tried to pull him back and he went off the side, with his size and positioning, he would probably pull both of us over,” said Laberge.