Police shocked by level of anger at canal jumper

She was perched on the edge of the freeway railing, the murky water of the Ship Canal 160 feet below.

Contemplating the end of her life at age 26, perhaps all she needed was a hand, a hug, a sign that she mattered.

That wasn't the message she got from her fellow human beings driving past.

"Jump!" "Get it over with!" commuters shouted. "Life's a bitch!"

Inside a Metro bus, passengers were swearing. "Everybody, including the bus driver, started saying, 'Just (expletive) jump ... and get it over with!' recalled one passenger, stuck for two hours as officers closed first southbound and then northbound Interstate 5.

Catcalls and jeers also came from below, said Sgt. L.G. Eddy, Seattle police crisis-intervention-team coordinator.

Clem Benton, police spokesman, said responding officers were "shaken up" by the insensitivity of the commuters. He said the noise, including the honking, catcalls and obscenities, caused officers to close the northbound lanes.

First on the scene, Officer Brian Thomas focused on the young woman on the railing, but he heard the taunts. "It upset me," he said.

It's not the first time people have yelled "jump" to a would-be suicide on top of a building or bridge.

But this is Seattle, after all — the same Seattle that prides itself on compassion, that houses the homeless in church parking lots, that raises whopping sums for United Way.

"I can see it reported in the New York Post," said Eric Trupin, a University of Washington psychologist. "But in Seattle?"

Those who study human behavior, however, say such behavior isn't always what it seems.

Sometimes, it signals impatience with a crisis that appears self-generated, said Ronald Maris, director of the Center for the Study of Suicide at the University of South Carolina.

"People tend to get impatient with suicides. They feel there's all these people who are sick or injured, through no fault of their own. ... " They're saying, in effect, "Life is tough enough with real problems — get real."

It's not that the passers-by really want people to jump, Maris said. But, focused on themselves, they think, "We've got real problems and real things to do, and here you are, with a manufactured crisis, interfering with the social life of the city."

Most suicide attempts happen at home, Maris noted, and when one takes place in a public place, passers-by feel put upon, as if the person is asking for some response from them, almost like a panhandler tugging on their coats.

"They feel it's intentional — `You did it to yourself, why do you want us to get involved in this?' " Maris said. "It's like people are saying, `This is not the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to go home, go to your bedroom, get drunk and shoot yourself.' "

And not block traffic.

There is something about being in motor vehicles that augments our ability to depersonalize one another, social psychologists say.

Sure, said the woman on the bus, the jumper was a human being. "She's a person, but everybody who was in a car this morning was also a person, and every one of them has a life, too," said the woman, who commutes from the North End into Bellevue.

Seattle University's Dick Cunningham, who helps train theology students, said he worries about our compassion and sense of community.

We have concern for the unborn, yet we treat a live person callously, he said. "The passers-by have lost any sense of who they are and their relationship to other people. ... The only thing that gives life meaning is that they're late."

Officer Thomas, despite being upset by the catcalls, said he could understand angry commuters. "I am a police officer, but I'm also a human being. I know had I been caught up in that traffic nightmare, I'd probably be frustrated, too."

In general, people aren't "coldhearted and callous," Maris emphasized. They might make inappropriate comments partly because public suicide attempts are rare.

But there could be a deeper rationale to the behavior, he said.

"Part of the feeling about suicides is kind of Darwinian. ... `Go ahead and get rid of those bad genes. ... Don't hang around and contaminate the rest of us.' There is this notion of biological fitness."

Still, Trupin said, it's "so disturbing that we have people who can't put themselves in this circumstance about how this person could be feeling, that this person is distraught and miserable ... and people are acting like it's play-acting, a game."

What we can forget, in the crush of traffic and being late, he said, is that the woman on the bridge railing is, just as we are, "the loved one of someone, the baby of some mom."

Some, perhaps many more than we know, did remember.

A witness from below, who saw the woman in the air, arms out, as she plummeted toward the water, sent an e-mail to The Seattle Times: "I could not imagine the pain she was feeling, both physically and emotionally. ... I hope she survives. I know a lot of drivers are very angry with her. I hope she recovers and finds support."