A local man was taken to the hospital Tuesday after threatening to jump off the top tier of a parking garage attached to 2 Corporate Drive.
Police and emergency personnel were called to the garage at about 11:40 a.m.
The initial radio dispatch said the man was on a car, threatening to jump.
Police had the man in custody as of noon.
Detective Sgt. Kevin Ahern said the despondent man wasn’t associated with any of the businesses or employers at the corporate towers, but had simply chosen that spot as the place to take his own life.
“He has mental health issues and he was going to go off the parking garage,” Ahern said.
A security employee at the corporate towers had seen the man on the property’s surveillance system and alerted police to what looked like a potential suicide attempt, Ahern said.
One of the first arriving police officers made his way up the parking garage to the ramp leading to the top level as others tried to see what was going on on the surveillance system.
Click the play button below to hear police radio dispatches from the incident. The audio has been edited, and is not in real-time.
The man had backed his car up to the wall of the structure and stood on the back of it as if he was going to jump, Ahern said.
The man got on and then off of his car “several times,” he said.
As he did so, Ahern said officers drove an unmarked car to the top level of the garage so the man’s suspicions wouldn’t be alerted.
The plan worked, he said, and while the man was unaware they took him into custody.
“As soon as he turned his back to us, we just stopped the car and bum-rushed him,” Ahern said.
The man was taken to Bridgeport Hospital for a mental health evaluation. Neither he nor any officers were injured during the incident, Ahern said.
