Rick Sound, a TriMet bus driver for 24 years, was steering a No. 77 bus west over the Steel Bridge Tuesday morning when he saw something that stopped him – and the bus – in their tracks.
A woman had hoisted one leg over the railing of the bridge, which spans the Willamette River in downtown Portland. He quickly parked the bus in the lane — there was nowhere to pull over — and ran out to stop her apparent plan to jump.
“I thought I better do something quick,” he said. “It had about five seconds to go downhill real quick.”
Yikes! Is it possible that grabbing her arm, forcing the woman and handcuffing her to a public passenger bus was a bit of an aggressive approach? This may have been extremely harmful– not to mention encouraging the very thought of her mother and father, could have been a precipitating factor for the suicide attempt.
This is not meant to discredit the bus driver for taking action with his best intentions in a moment of crisis. This story just didn’t feel necessarily like a “good news” story.