Atop East Rock, It Was Life Or Death

Officer Doug Pearse thought he and his partner still had a ​“50 – 50” chance to rescue a suicidal woman at East Rock’s summit. Then she stood up at the precipice of a rock and bent her knees above a deadly drop.

Pearse and fellow city cop Brian Jackson were on their bellies on another rock four feet above her. They needed to convince her to help rather than jump.

The dramatic scene took place last week. Cops and firefighters swarmed East Rock hoping to avoid a replay of another search that ended in death.

In the end, that task would fall to Pearse and Jackson, two seventh-year cops who began their careers as bunkmates in a training academy, who after years as partners know each other’s moves. They found themselves struggling to keep alive not only the woman but themselves.

Avoiding A Replay

Pearse and Jackson were among the first half dozen or so cops who rushed to the summit of East Rock when the call first came over the police radio around noon on June 5.

The dispatcher reported that a mother had called to say her 25-year-old daughter was driving to the summit to kill herself. The daughter was about to undergo surgery for a severe heart condition and had received a gloomy post-surgery prognosis. A romantic relationship had also just ended.

Pearse and Jackson were in the area. They’ve been working the combined East Rock/Newhallville district for years. They walked a beat together their first three and a half years on the force, developed that wordless communication that leads one to assume primary contact with someone in a tense situation while the other assists as back-up. In fact, they’d been buddies, both on and off the job, since bunking together at the Connecticut POST training academy. Now they patrol separately in cruisers, but still on the same 7 a.m.-3 p.m. shift, and end up hanging together to write their reports.

As Pearse drove toward the summit 400 feet above New Haven, he had last November on his mind. That’s when he and many other officers and firefighters spent two days searching for a 37-year-old emotionally disturbed man who had gone missing. Crews combed sprawling East Rock Park with the help of helicopter back-up; when they finally found the man, he was dead.

Pearse, who is 32 and originally from Granby, thought about the lesson from that day: Those first moments count. ​“Cover as much ground as you can right away.” He hoped he and his colleagues would find this woman sooner than later.

As Jackson, who’s 29 and originally from Shrewsbury, Mass., drove toward the summit, his mind flashed to one day in August of 2016, when he responded to a call about an emotionally disturbed man off his medication at the Ruoppolo Manor complex in Fair Haven. When Jackson arrived, the man charged at him with a knife; his mother said the man had wanted the police to come in order to attack them. Jackson fired his gun at the man, injuring him with shots to the belly. (The state’s attorney — along with the man’s mother and other authorities — concluded the shots were ​“reasonable” and ​“justifiable.”)

Will this woman have a weapon? Jackson wondered on his way up East Rock.

Both officers had been to plenty other calls that sounded similar but turned out to be non-threatening cries for help. Would this call turn out like those calls? Or like the other two life-or-death encounters?

On The Edge

Once at the summit, they and other officers fanned out to search for the woman, whom we’ll call Brianna (not her real name). The dispatcher reported that Brianna was five-foot-three with long black hair. She was wearing a flower-patterned blouse. She was driving a burgundy SUV.

Brianna had turned off her phone after arriving at the summit, so there was no way to trace where at the park she now was, although there was a report that she might be on a ​“rock over water.”

Officers spotted the SUV. It was empty.

Jackson has often driven up to the summit in his free time to chill. He had some familiarity with the terrain. He headed a few hundred feet from the summit to a spot where he thought he’d seen a rock overlooking water, then parked his car.

Walking on a path, he came to a bend. He looked down an incline — and saw her sitting on a small rock, ​“with her feet dangling off a ledge” above the 400-foot drop.

At first Jackson kept his distance. He didn’t want to startle her for fear she’d accidentally tumble over. He called in his general location (there were no clear markings or signs) to dispatch.

Meanwhile, Officer Pearse was walking a nearby path that overlooked steep drops. He figured that might be where someone bent on jumping might go. He heard on the radio that Jackson had found Brianna.

He immediately recognized Jackson’s parked cruiser because of the time they’ve worked together. He ran up the path toward him.

Jackson spoke softly to Brianna, made sure to use his name. He had picked up some tips about how to handle these situations at a Crisis Intervention Training course he once took at UConn, but he had to go pretty much on instinct and experience in the field.

“Hey Brianna,” he said, making sure to use her name for familiarity. ​“What’s going on? Can we help you?”

She looked at him, then turned back to face the abyss. She rocked back and forth at the edge of the rock, sobbing and whimpering.

Jackson stepped gradually toward her, judging her reactions while looking around to judge the terrain for a possible rescue.

Pearse arrived. Jackson was happy it was his pal and partner. ​“We worked together so much. This is the best time to have that mutual understanding — when somebody’s life is in your hand.”

Pearse took over the talking. He identified himself. ​“We’re here to help you.” Jackson noticed that Brianna briefly turned to look at Pearse and make eye contact, so Jackson fell into assist mode, continued judging the terrain. He didn’t see anywhere they could secure her to prevent her from jumping. Instead, they crawled onto a rock four feet above her.

At first, they couldn’t reach down to grab her, given the precarious setting. ​“If she goes forward,” Pearse remembered thinking, ​“we’re going forward.”

His strategy: ​“Try to make her feel she has hope. Try to have her see me as a human, a human she did not want to disappoint.” He leaned on the first-person plural: ​“We can work through this together.” He repeatedly told her ​“today’s not the day.”

Brianna’s legs dangled over the edge of the rock.

“Can you scoot back?” Pearse asked.

She did.

“OK,” Pearse thought. ​“We’ve got a shot here.”

Appealing To Motherhood

Pearse now judged their chances of saving Brianna at 50 – 50: Either she was moving back to judge how best to jump. Or she was reconsidering.

By now Brianna was wailing. She spoke of her young son, how she felt she had failed as a mother. She spoke of how she was going to die soon anyway.

The son … Pearse could work with that.

“You’re going to be able to see your son,” he said. Over and over he stressed the word ​“today.” Today wasn’t the day to give up on giving her son a better life. Today wasn’t the day to end it.

Then Brianna stood up —and stepped right to the ledge. She bent her knees as though to jump.

Pearse judged their chances of saving her had plunged to 5 percent.

His supervisor, Sgt. Milt Jackson (no relation to Brian), stood 15 feet away, watching. He figured the same thing: ​“There was nowhere for her to go except down. The path to where she was so narrow. The little point she was standing on, the rock was rounded. Her feet were on a decline. Her toes were headed down. She could easily slip. She was so distraught. I could hear Doug: ​‘Look at me. Not today. Just say it to yourself, ​“Not today.”’

“I just knew she was going to go. There was only a lip of rock.”

Pearse kept pleading. Officer Brian Jackson joined in.

By that point, a firefighter had crawled to the officers and attached harnesses to their uniforms. Now they, at least, were safe from a fatal plunge.

Jackson and Pearse reached down to Brianna.

“Look at my hands. Look at me,” Pearse pleaded. ​“Let’s get help. We can take care of this. It’s not today …”

Inside he realized: This is now her choice.

4 Feet Up

And she chose to reach up.

Pearse grabbed her left bicep. Jackson grabbed her right.

“Brianna,” Pearse warned her, ​“it’s going to hurt.” They would have to drag her across her rock and then up to the four feet to their own rock.

They got on their knees and pulled. It was an upper-body lift. They couldn’t quite get her up the four feet to her rock at first.

Thankfully, Pearse noticed, ​“she was working with us.” But she wasn’t raising her own body.

“Let’s do this together,” Jackson said.

“It’s not going to change anything!” Brianna cried.

“You’re gonna give your son a good life,” Pearse encouraged her.

“We’re going to pull you up now,” chimed in Jackson. ​“Give it our best shot, OK?”

They finally got her about 80 percent of the way up, when a member of the fire department joined in and lifted Brianna the final distance to safety.

Time to exhale.

Jackson gathered up Brianna’s crocs and cell phone. He rode with her in the ambulance to Yale-new Haven Hospital, where she was committed to the psychiatric unit.

Supervisor Milt Jackson wrote the pair up for a commendation. He called it ​“some of the finest police work” he’s seen in his 20 years on the job. ​“I was proud of those guys. There’s no doubt in my mind they saved her life.”

“There are so many ways it could have gone wrong,” Pearse noted.

Thankfully it had gone right. And it was the best feeling a cop could have. ​“One of the best feelings I have had in my life,” Brian Jackson said.

“It’s why,” Pearse added, ​“most of us sign up for this job.”

Read other installments in the Independent’s ​“Cop of the Week” series: 

• Shafiq Abdussabur
• Yessennia Agosto
• Craig Alston & Billy White Jr.
• Joseph Aurora
• James Baker
• Lloyd Barrett
• Pat Bengston & Mike Valente
• Elsa Berrios
• Manmeet Bhagtana (Colon)
• Paul Bicki
• Paul Bicki (2)
• Sheree Biros
• Bitang
• Scott Branfuhr
• Bridget Brosnahan
• Craig Burnett & Orlando Crespo
• Keron Bryce and Steve McMorris
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia
• Keron Bryce and Osvaldo Garcia (2)
• Dennis Burgh
• Anthony Campbell
• Darryl Cargill & Matt Wynne
• Elizabeth Chomka & Becky Fowler
• Rob Clark & Joe Roberts
• Sydney Collier
• Carlos Conceicao
• Carlos Conceicao (2)
• Carlos Conceicao and Josh Kyle
• David Coppola
• Mike Criscuolo
• Natalie Crosby
• Steve Cunningham and Timothy Janus
• Chad Curry
• Roy Davis
• Joe Dease
• Milton DeJesus
• Milton DeJesus (2)
• Rose Dell
• Brian Donnelly
• Anthony Duff
• Robert DuPont
• Robert DuPont and Rose Dell
• Eric Eisenhard & Jasmine Sanders
• Jeremie Elliott and Scott Shumway
• Jeremie Elliott (2)
• Jose Escobar Sr.
• Bertram Ettienne
• Bertram Ettienne (2)
• Martin Feliciano & Lou DeCrescenzo
• Paul Finch
• Jeffrey Fletcher
• Renee Forte
• Marco Francia
• Michael Fumiatti
• Michael Fumiatti (2)
• William Gargone
• William Gargone (2)
• William Gargone & Mike Torre
• Derek Gartner
• Derek Gartner & Ryan Macuirzynski
• Tom Glynn & Matt Williams
• Jon Haddad & Daniela Rodriguez
• Michael Haines
• Michael Haines & Brendan Borer
• Michael Haines & Brendan Borer (2)
• Dan Hartnett
• Ray Hassett
• Robert Hayden
• Patricia Helliger
• Robin Higgins
• Ronnell Higgins
• William Hurley & Eddie Morrone
• Derek Huelsman
• Racheal Inconiglios
• Juan Ingles
• Bleck Joseph and Marco Correa
• Shayna Kendall
• Paul Kenney
• Hilda Kilpatrick
• Herb Johnson
• John Kaczor & Alex Morgillo
• Jillian Knox
• Peter Krause
• Peter Krause (2)
• Amanda Leyda
• Rob Levy
• Anthony Maio
• Dana Martin
• Reggie McGlotten
• Steve McMorris
• Juan Monzon
• Monique Moore and David Santiago
• Matt Myers
• Carlos and Tiffany Ortiz
• Tiffany Ortiz
• Chris Perrone
• Joseph Perrotti
• Ron Perry
• Joe Pettola
• Diego Quintero and Elvin Rivera
• Ryan Przybylski
• Stephanie Redding
• Tony Reyes
• David Rivera
• Luis & David Rivera
• Luis Rivera (2)
• Salvador Rodriguez
• Salvador Rodriguez (2)
• Brett Runlett
• David Runlett
• Betsy Segui & Manmeet Colon
• Allen Smith
• Marcus Tavares
• Martin Tchakirides
• David Totino
• Stephan Torquati
• Gene Trotman Jr.
* Elisa Tuozzoli
• Kelly Turner
• Lars Vallin (& Xander)
• Dave Vega & Rafael Ramirez
• Earl Reed
• Daophet Sangxayarath & Jessee Buccaro
• Herb Sharp
• Matt Stevens and Jocelyn Lavandier
• Jessica Stone
• Jessica Stone & Mike DeFonzo
• Arpad Tolnay
• Mike Torre & Ray Saracco
• John Velleca
• Manuella Vensel
• Holly Wasilewski
• Holly Wasilewski (2)
• Alan Wenk
• Stephanija VanWilgen
• Elizabeth White & Allyn Wright
• Matt Williams
• Michael Wuchek
• Michael Wuchek (2)
• David Zannelli
• Cailtin Zerella
• Caitlin Zerella (2)
• Caitlin Zerella, Derek Huelsman, David Diaz, Derek Werner, Nicholas Katz, and Paul Mandel
• David Zaweski