Teen prevents suicide on Hennepin Bridge

By Sinthia Mireya Turcios and Sinthia Turcios of Washburn High School

Kris Mitchell, 17, returns to the bridge where on April 15 he helped convince a man to give life a second chance.

Photo By: Sinthia Mireya Turcios

The conversation between the man and him lasted about 15 to 20 minutes until three police squad cars arrived.

Kris Mitchell was walking home from work across the Hennepin Bridge like usual on April 15 when he noticed something unusual – a man standing on the edge of the bridge.

“Two thoughts went through my head: either he was a daredevil and he’s just messing around, or he’s going to jump,” Kris said.

Kris, 17, walked slowly to toward the man to make sure everything was all right. He didn’t want to startle him, who he described as being of Hispanic descent, had no accent and was about 25 years old.

“Are you OK,” Kris asked.

“You are the first one to stop,” he said.

When Kris heard this, he realized the man was trying to commit suicide by jumping off the bridge into the Mississippi River about 40-50 feet below.

“By the tone of his voice, he was calmed down. He wasn’t scared. But the man was emotionally down. He was sad and depressed,” Kris said in July.

“I was terrified that the man would actually jump off, not necessarily the legal trouble I might get into, but I just wanted him to know that someone cared so that he wouldn’t jump,” Kris said.

Kris was shaken by the situation, but knew he needed to stay calm. Kris told him that he should think about the people who love him and support him. “Life happened. I’m at the end of my rope, man. Life is over for me,” the man said.

“I doubt that. I know that people love you and support you. You may not know it but they do,” Kris said.

“No,” said the man and laughed.

“You sure? Not a mother, father, family, friends,” Kris asked.

The man’s expression changed then. “He thought about it,” Kris said.

Kris opened up to this man and told him about his own hardships, hardships that helped Kris understand what kinds of feelings had driven this man to the edge of a bridge.

Kris is legally blind. He needs magnifiers to read text and can’t drive a car.

From kindergarten through third grade he wore “glasses the size of my face,” he said, and people thought his disability controlled his ability. “They would say things like: ‘You can’t see, how can you do this? How can you do that?’ ”

Kris said he realized his peers were attacking him for something over which he had no control. “That’s when I started having the attitude that I had to prove them wrong,” he said. “I had to get involved, play sports, be the best reader in third grade … I had the Harry Potter book done as a third grader in one night.”

Kris used his own struggle with despair to guide his conversation with the man on the bridge. “You shouldn’t have to take your life away. There is always hope. Always,” Kris told him.

The conversation between the man and him lasted about 15 to 20 minutes until three police squad cars arrived. Kris doesn’t know who called them. He believes that it was either someone who drove by or there just happened to be a police car that passed by.

When they arrived, the police took over the situation. Kris was struck by how the squads only sent over one man, and the officer approached the man on the bridge with the same caution Kris had used. Twenty minutes after the police arrived, the man decided to not jump.

“You did the right thing,” Kris told him.

The Minneapolis Police Department gave Kris an award for doing the right thing – helping to prevent a suicide. Minneapolis Chief of Police Timothy Dolan invited Kris to City Hall on July 20 to give him the award.

Ask him if he considers himself a hero and Kris will say: “No. Anyone can be a hero. I’ve been trying to help people understand that I don’t recognize myself as a hero ‘cause anyone can do that — be a hero. What I did was the right thing. It doesn’t make me a hero.”

Even though he doesn’t consider himself a hero, others do. “He had no back up, no tools like police officers do. Officers get trained. They specialize for situations like this. As a citizen, he is a hero … to all of us here,” Dolan said. “It’s not common for someone to step up like Kris did.”

Kris also received a “Good Samaritan Award” from De La Salle High School, his school in Minneapolis, which is located below the Hennepin Bridge on Nicollet Island.

Kris stepped in and helped prevent a tragedy that night, but suffered his own tragedy in return.

While he talked to the man, Kris noticed that people passed by, but not one person stopped to intervene or ask what was going on. “The Twins game had just let out. The Timberwolves game had just let out,” Kris said — there were tons of people out that night who could’ve helped.

“I just can’t believe what this world has come to,” he said. “(I thought) everyone cared for everyone, that we were all just like a big family. I thought that people had the wanting to help others, that everyone felt that connection between each other.”

Kris is devastated by the suspicion that he was wrong. Even though the police eventually came and there is a chance someone else called them, Kris isn’t comforted because he can’t know for sure.

“It changed my view of the world, what I’ve known Minneapolis to be,” he said.