4 Citizens Pitch in to Save Man from Himself

When a troubled man, possibly under the influence, threatened to take his own life Friday, four citizens cooperated to see that he did not succeed.

At about 2 p.m., a Tosa resident was driving down 115th Street when a pedestrian lurched into the street in front of him. The driver had to hit the brakes hard to avoid hitting him. He said that the man appeared intoxicated, and he stopped to see that he reached safety.

An employee of the Canadian Pacific railroad was sitting in a truck near the rail crossing in the 1000 block of North 115th Street when he saw the pedestrian in his mirror staggering toward him.

The CP worker was there to monitor the crossing for safety. He was about to learn a new aspect of his job.

The man came up to his truck and asked, "When is the next train coming?"

"I don't know," the rail worker told him. But the man repeated the question.

The railroad man told him he had just cleared a westbound Amtrak train that was expected shortly.

"Which track is it on?" the man asked. There are two sets of railroad tracks at the crossing.

"The north tracks," the CP man told him.

The man immediately walked to the north tracks and lay down on them.

'I want to die'

The railroad worker jumped out of his truck and ran to the man, trying to move him from the tracks. He couldn't. The man weighed 260 pounds.

The driver of the car that had almost hit the man ran to help. Together, the two couldn't move the man, who kept saying, "Leave me alone, I want to die."

Two more passersby saw the emergency, stopped, joined the effort and finally the four of them dragged the 49-year-old Wauwatosa man from the tracks before police arrived to take over the situation.

The man was taken to Froedtert Hospital for observation.

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Editor's note: It is typically the practice of Wauwatosa Patch not to report on suicides, suicide attempts or emergency mental health detentions unless they also involve a crime or other broader threat to the community. In this case, the exception is because of the unusually public nature of the incident and the fact that a number of citizens felt called upon to respond and assist in saving a life.