12 students and their coach from Kepler Neighborhood School in Fresno, California
Fresno, CA — A 47-year old woman from Fresno, California, was about to commit suicide when a group of students who spotted her hanging from a bridge reportedly changed her mind not to jump. The boys have been applauded, and are being called heroes for helping save the woman’s life. The 12 students, who were all in the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades and members of the boys’ volleyball team of Kepler Neighborhood School, were jogging along the streets for their training when they saw a woman climb over the edge of the street about 50 meters away from them.
The woman was about to fall 100 feet directly onto the railroad below the bridge when the boys immediately took action. They ran to their coach Elliot Murray to alert him about the situation, yelling for him to call 911.
When Murray saw the woman dangling from the bridge, he called 911 and told the boys to come a little closer to the woman and do everything to keep her from jumping.
“I immediately told the kids, ‘Do everything you can, chant, say ‘Stop, your life is worth it’, and they just kept on chanting,” Murray told ABC News.
After the boys kept yelling words of encouragement to distract her for 10 minutes, urging her to come back up to the bridge, the woman finally pulled herself up to safety.
Police arrived on the scene shortly after. The woman, who was identified only as a Hispanic female, was then placed to a 72-hour mental health evaluation.
Although it was still unknown what the circumstances to what led her to commit suicide were or if it was really the boy’s efforts that stopped her, Murray believes that their encouraging shouts were a factor in changing her mind.
“She took a glance and hearing those kids, it registered to her, ‘I can’t do this in front of them’,” he said.