Police Officer Talks Football to Prevent Man From Jumping Off Bridge – blogged by @LoveRubyWoo

Michael Blackmore, a master patrol officer with the Columbia Police Department, was able to save the life of a South Carolina man late Friday night. The man was sitting on the edge of a bridge crying and threatening to jump when Officer Blackmore arrived and started a conversation with him in an effort to talk him off the ledge. As their conversation ensued, Blackmore found out that the man was a football fan, namely a fan of the Washington Redskins and the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. With this information in hand, Blackmore used it to bring some positivity back into the man’s life, who claimed that he was tired of living. “I just wanted to get his mind off of what was bothering him,” he said in an interview with The State.

Body cameras captured the conversation between the two men. “You’re just having a bad night tonight,” Blackmore told him. “But tomorrow night, when you’re sitting around and you’re watching the Gamecocks – or on Sunday when you’re watching the Redskins play or whatever – you’ll look back like, ‘Man, what was I thinking Friday night?’ You’re just having a bad night.” Slowly, but surely, Blackmore’s tactics worked and he was able to get the man away from the edge of the bridge and safely into an ambulance.