A man in southern China has been taken into police custody after pushing a would-be-suicide jumper off a bridge frequented by people threatening to end their lives, state press said.
Lai Jiansheng was detained by police for pushing a man named Chen off the bridge in Guangzhou city that has been the site of 12 suicide attempts since the beginning of April, the China Daily said.
None of the suicide attempts have been successful, the paper said, but traffic over the bridge has been jammed for hours during each attempt as police sought to talk the people out of ending their lives.
"I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their actions violate a lot of public interests," the paper quoted Lai as saying.
Lai, upset with the traffic delay, broke through the police cordon on the bridge, walked up to Chen and shook his hand before pushing him off the bridge, it said.
Chen was threatening to commit suicide because of a two million yuan (294,000 dollar) debt he incurred over a failed construction project, it said.
The would-be jumper fell eight metres (yards) into a partially-inflated emergency cushion and came away from the incident with his life intact but his back injured, it said.
Police said that with each suicide attempt, the city had to send police, firemen, rescue vessels and an ambulance.
source
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=817211LEGEND
