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Family members said they feared a 51-year-old Manhattan woman would jump today when rookie Officers Cesar Moreno and Terence McPike spotted her pacing back and forth on the south walkway around 4 p.m.
The officers, who recently completed anti-suicide training, convinced her to come with them to the bus station at the Washington Heights end of the span, the authority’s Joseph Pentangelo said.
At 4:20 p.m., Officers Edgardo Bote and Thomas Rail spotted a 33-year-old homeless man on the West 179th Street ramp, which is open only to vehicles.
He was looking over the railing onto the upper level roadway as it emerges from under “the apartments,” then became violent when the officers approached, Pentangelo said.
The officers wrestled him to the pavement and handcuffed the man, he said.
He then “admitted that he was about to jump over the railing to commit suicide by hurling himself into westbound traffic,” Pentangelo said.
Both the woman and man were taken to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for evaluation, he said.
It was the 10th and 11th interventions for PAPD police and the 17th and 18th “suicide event” for the department — twice as many as occurred over this same period last year, Pentangelo said.
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