Quick Thinking Delivery Men Save Suicidal Man With Promise Of Beer
What does it take to be a hero? A pair of beer delivery drivers found out that sometimes the only thing it takes is being at the right place at the right time with the right incentive.
On Wednesday in St. Paul Minnesota Jason Gable and Kwame Anderson were driving a truck of Coors Light when they discovered a man standing on the edge of the Earl Street Bridge, above Interstate 94.
The man was standing on the other side of a chain link fence when the two drivers, who had inadvertently got on the same road, spotted him and decided to take action to prevent his suicide, KSTP reported.
“Yo, bro, you alright? Man, come on this side, bro,” Gable said to the man in a video recorded by Anderson.
The man told the drivers that he planned on committing suicide. That’s when Gable and Anderson stopped the truck, called 911 and began talking to the man.
“My first impression is this is not happening right now,” Gable told KSTP. “Is this fake?”
“I was thinking to myself: ‘This poor guy is going to end his life in front of us and Kwame and I were here to witness it,’” he said.
Anderson said he did not know what to say to the man to convince him to save his own life when he thought of Denzel Washington in the movie “Inside Man” where the actor played a hostage negotiator for the New York Police Department.
“I thought about his negotiating tactics in ‘The Insider,'” Anderson said. “I was like ‘Alright, I got to be the negotiator.’ I wanted to build a rapport with him. So I asked him his name, where he grew up. He says he’s got a house four blocks away from here.”
They offered the man cash, they offered him food, but then they remembered what they were carrying and had another idea.
“I left and I grabbed a case of beer,” Anderson said. “I came back and said if you get down from there, this is yours.”
The beer, and the talking, worked and the man agreed to come off the bridge.
But it was the two drivers who got the best present. “This is the best present a guy could have,” Gable told KSTP. “You helped save somebody’s life.”
