Last Updated on: 30th September 2016, 12:18 pm
Not sure if I’m in a weird mood today or if I’m just this much of a dick all the time, but I find this story greatly amusing right now.
China bridge jumper ‘gets a push’
A man threatening to commit suicide by jumping from a Chinese bridge was approached by a passer-by who shoved him over the edge, local media say.
Lai Jiansheng, 66, said he was fed up with the desperate man’s “selfish activity” which caused huge traffic jams in Guangzhou, southern China.
Chen Fuchao fell 26ft (8m) on to an air cushion and is recovering in hospital, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Xinhua said Mr Lai was “taken away by police”, but gave no further details.
Traffic around the bridge was stopped for five hours while officers tried to coax Mr Chen to safety.
Retired soldier Mr Lai at first volunteered to try to talk Mr Chen down but was turned away by police, Xinhua said.
Mr Lai is said to have then broken through the police cordon, climbed to where Mr Chen sat, greeted him with a handshake – and then pushed him off the edge.
Pictures in the China Daily show him saluting to the crowd after Mr Chen fell on to the partially filled emergency air cushion.
“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish,” the newspaper quoted Mr Lai as saying.
“Their action violates a lot of public interests. They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”
Two things:
1. This Lai fellow may have made history by being the first person to be taken away by Chinese police who has ever been heard from again.
2. What he says about these road clogging bastards might be true. According to the BBC report I’m working from here, 12 people have threatened to jump off of this bridge since the start of April alone and not one has actually done it, but as the article helpfully points out, “each has held up traffic for several hours.”
and for the sake of telling the full story as best I can…
3. Chen Fuchao is likely going to be fine. He’s in hospital nursing some spine and elbow injuries but is expected to live to obstruct another day.
