Good Samaritan Stops a Suicide

On his way home from work in Oakland, a man spotted a suicide attempt in the making—and managed to stop it from happening. Lonnie Monroe saw another man walking on the wrong side of an overpass railing above I-580. "You could see the look on his face," Monroe tells the San Francisco Chronicle. "There was something seriously wrong with him." Monroe "walked with him all the way across" the overpass, then took hold of him in a bear hug, ensuring he wouldn't fall.

"He never said anything to anybody except me. He just told me he didn't want to be here anymore. He wasn't happy and he wanted to die. I asked him why, and he didn't answer me," Monroe says. But "it had to do with his family." Monroe told the man stories of his own family troubles, the Oakland Tribune reports. An onlooker offered a rope, which Monroe attached to the man as they talked; other passersby stopped and offered calming words. Eventually, firefighters arrived, brought the man down on a ladder, and sent him to the hospital. Monroe says he's no hero: "It was the right thing to do." (More uplifting news stories.)