by PAUL BASS
Officer Daniel Evans didn’t know when he reported to work that he would need to rush to save a man from leaping to his death. But when the moment arrived, he was ready — because he had prepared.
Evans saved the life of a 58-year-old man on the top level of the Air Rights Garage on Sunday, June 4 shortly after 5:30 p.m.
Evans, a 31-year-old former elevator mechanic from Queens, has patrolled the Hill district since completing his field training as a new officer three months ago. (Click here to read a previous story about him here.)
He was sitting in a a cruiser outside the Congress Avenue police substation writing a report when the call came over the police radio about a man looking like he might want to jump from the garage by Yale New Haven Hospital on York Street.
Evans hurried over, drove up the spiraling ramps, and saw the man at the edge of the top deck.
NHPD BODY CAM
He parked his cruiser more than 100 feet away. After completing his field training, Evans had signed up for a voluntary crisis intervention course for extra tips on handling situations like this one. He had learned that rushing or coming too close at first could amp up the person’s distress, maybe make him jump. Evans wouldn’t be close enough to prevent him from jumping. He learned about the need to stay calm, to keep a conversation going.
It was windy up on the roof deck.
“Hey what’s up, buddy?” Evans called out, as seen in body camera footage of the incident reviewed by the Independent.
The man didn’t respond. He did back away from the edge of the deck.
That offered Evans an opportunity: He kept walking, not running, to get between the man and the edge.
A hospital security officer approached the scene, moving more quickly.
“Hey, hey, slow down. You’re walking up too close,” Evans told him in an undertone as Evans approached the distressed man from the left.
“Go to your right. Go to your right,” Evans directed the security officer as Evans proceeded toward the man’s left.
Then the distressed man bolted back to the chest-high concrete wall at the edge of the deck.
“Buddy, what’s your name?” Evans called to him. “Talk to me. What’s up, man?”
The distressed man put both hands on the edge. He began to lift a leg over the concrete wall.
“No, no, no. Wait. Talk to me!”
At this point Evans could see that the man was preparing to jump. At this point Evans would need to run to save him.
Fortunately, at this point, he was close enough to get there in time. Just as the man was lifting himself up on the wall, Evans grabbed him in a clinch body hold, a jujitsu technique he learned in the police academy. He brought the man to the ground.
The security officer followed up from behind, as did Evans’ NHPD patrol partner, Officer Stacey Villone.
“You’re going to be OK,” Evans assured the man.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” the man kept responding.
Officer Villone checked the man for physical injuries. She noted in a subsequent report that the man “appeared to be extremely ill” and described with slurred speech about wanting to fly. He started crying.
Evans looked to the side where wind had swept up a pile of dirt. In it the man had apparently written: “I ♥ you.”
“We’re going to get you help,” Evans assured him. Medics, who had also arrived on the scene, took the man down to the hospital for an evaluation.
Assistant Chief David Zannelli, who oversees patrol, credited Evans’ initial deescalation: “He was able to slow things down to jump into action to save a life — putting his own life at risk, which was heroic.”
“I was grateful I could get him the help he needs,” Evans said in an interview. “This is what I signed up for: I signed up to help people, to be the one to show up for calls” and be ready to act fast.
Preparation made the difference, he said: The crisis course, the jujitsu training, the kettlebell squats and lunges and uphill springs he does each morning at home along with the thrice-weekly bench presses and treadmill and StairMaster sessions at Edge Fitness. He needs to show up to work everyday ready to act fast without advance warning to help someone in crisis, he said. Whenever that call happens to come.