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Clifton police alerted their PAPD counterparts that the 29-year-old man had called his mother saying that he planned to jump.
Officers then pinged his cellphone and spotted him trying to hid from them on the south walkway around 10:20 a.m.
He gave a false name and said he wasn’t planning to jump, they said, but they determined that it was him after checking his identification.
The officers walked him to their bridge office, and EMS workers took the man to Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck.
As PAPD officers looked for the man, state and national Democrats held a news conference overlooking the bridge at Fort Lee Historic Park.
Florida Congresswoman and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, New Jersey Democratic Party Chairman John Currie and news reporters seemed unaware of what was happening below. Two Palisades Interstate Parkway police officers who knew what was going on kept watch over both the conference and the bridge.
This follows an incident last night in which Clifton police called the PAPD to report a 42-year-old suicidal man headed for the GWB.
Officers found him around 9:45 p.m. “lingering on the south walkway around the support cables, upset and crying,” the authority’s Joseph Pentangelo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. “They talked with him and convinced him not to do anything.”
The man was taken to Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, Pentangelo said.
Police found his car on Hudson Terrace, he said.
The Port Authority this summer announced plans for a nine-foot, $50 million barrier to deter would-be jumpers, following one planned at the Golden Gate Bridge in California (SEE: Will GWB follow Golden Gate with suicide nets?).
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