Suicide Prevention
From 1998 to 2008, more than 25 people committed suicide on the Tappan Zee Bridge, according to the New York State Thruway Authority. On August 31, 2007, NYSTA officials added four phones – two each on the Rockland and Westchester sides – that connect callers via the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline suicide prevention hotline to counselors at LifeNet or Covenant House. Signs reading "Life is Worth Living" and "When it seems like there is no hope, there is help" have been placed on the bridge. Suicide fencing and traffic cameras have also been installed along the bridge, and bridge staff have been trained in suicide prevention. An October 14, 2012 Newsday article reports, the Tappan Zee Bridge has been referred to as the Golden Gate Bridge of the East, and "The new Tappan Zee, which is in the works, will include fencing designed to thwart jumpers."
The most famous and notorious suicides that happened on the Tappan Zee Bridge are those of Scott Douglas on January 1, 1994 after brutally bludgeoning his wife Anne Scripps to death, and on September 24, 2009 of his stepdaughter Annie Morrell Petrillo, who jumped from that same bridge to her death. Two US military service members jumped from the bridge to their deaths in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Tappan Zee Bridge
Famous quotes containing the words suicide and/or prevention:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967)