An off-duty police officer and a Good Samaritan resident are being praised after saving a man about to jump off the M5 bridge onto the N1 highway.
A video of the incident has gone viral on social media.
Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Psaradelis, a 31-year SAPS veteran, was on his way home on Friday around 2 pm when he spotted the man standing on the bridge railing with a cast on his leg and a wheelchair nearby.
“It was a heavenly intervention,” Psaradelis told IOL. “I was at the right place at the right time.”
He and a colleague made a quick U-turn and rushed to the scene.
“My biggest fear was that he would jump and land on someone’s windscreen… and it would be a huge issue,” he said.
With help from a bystander, who has also been praised for his intervention, Psaradelis approached the man, trying to calm him down. “He kept saying, ‘I’ve had enough,’” Psaradelis recalled. “So the other guy and I coordinated to move in and grab him around the waist and pull him down.”
The man was taken to a hospital by Woodstock police and is now receiving treatment.
Psaradelis is attached to the Provincial Office and deployed at Organisational Development (OD).
Provincial police management has commended the colonel for his heroic and selfless act to intervene with others to save the man.
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