28 North shut down - 1:10pm 4/11

28 Northbound at Waxpool is currently closed. Suicide jumper.

Not sure when it will re-open. Check local news for latest updates.

1:10pm on Wed, 4/11/07

 

Oh. My. I think i saw this person. I was heading into Ashburn on Waxpool earlier and I was stopped at the light to cross over 28. I saw a car on the shoulder and a man was looking down at traffic on 28.

 

Yup. I was heading to Waxpool from 28 during my lunch hour and it was not pretty. Hope everything is resolved by afternoon rush hour.

 

stupid question here, but did the man jump or is it being stopped for someone to talk him down. (I hope its the 2nd of the two options)

 

He jumped. Here is the blurb from Leesburg Today:
The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office has alerted motorists that the northbound lanes of Rt. 28 near Waxpool Road will be closed for several hours.

According to witness calls to the sheriff's office, a man jumped off the bridge this morning in what appeared to be a suicide attempt.

The road closure alert was issued at 11:37 a.m.

 

UPDATE: Now open! 4:06pm Re: 28 North shut down - 1:10pm 4/11

Road is back open, according to Sheriff's Office.

4:06pm

 

LoCo has some details:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/livinginloco/

(Thanks Tammi)

 

why couldn't this guy kill himself without ruining someone else's day? it says a white truck hit him...now that guy who was driving will have to live with it for the rest of his (or her) life. i have no tolerance for this stuff....

 

Except the white truck didn't stop...

 

from the Loudoun Times website -
Witnesses began calling the Sheriff's Office around 10:31 a.m. Several vehicles were in the area when the 58-year-old man jumped, but it does not appear that any of them struck the man, Sheriff's Office spokesman Kraig Troxell said.

"If anybody was in this area at about this time that has any information, we'd certainly appreciate a call," Simpson said.



Maybe that's why the white truck didn't stop - it didn't hit him....

here's the link - http://www.loudountimes.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=18196175&BRD=2553&PAG=461&dept_id=507589&rfi=6

 

(why couldn't this guy kill himself without ruining someone else's day? it says a white truck hit him...now that guy who was driving will have to live with it for the rest of his (or her) life. i have no tolerance for this stuff....)


WOW! I feel for you. So sorry that someone else who was at such a troubled point in his life and in his 60's to boot, made a decsion to take his life. That he chose to jump off the overpass into oncoming traffic, caused a mess and a traffic backup just made your day huh?

Shame on you. We know nothing about him or what was happening in his life. These days it seems to be all about "ME" rather than having compassion and caring about other human beings. Tolerance has gone out the window.

Yep the driver of the truck will feel bad, but maybe feel off the hook when he reads that the jumper died from injuries sustained by his jump - not the truck driving over him.

 

Don't waste your time "feeling" for me. I'm truly sorry that he felt that he had no other options in life than to jump off an overpass, and that is absolutely horrible...however i don't take back what i said. Nothing infuriates me more than miserable people who try to make other people miserable. There are options out there for people to seek help. We all have problems, but i don't wear mine on my sleeve, or jump into traffic when i decide one day it's gonna break me.

It's not all about ME...but i think suicide is a selfish solution. And don't presume to judge me as if i don't have reasons for feeling the way i do. YOU don't know ME and what i've had happen in my life.

 

I have to agree with Woopity - suicide is always sad and I can feel for the person who felt that desperate and miserable but I wish they would do what they want to do in a way that doesn't have a personal effect on strangers. I remember a few years ago when someone jumped in front of a Metro train and the driver of that train was just devastated. Even though that guy clearly wanted to do what he did, he involved others in a way that was life changing for them. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be driving along and suddenly a body falls on the windshield of your car! That would be pretty traumatic for me.

I guess my point is that if I were to commit suicide (which I don't plan to do) I have thought about it and would do it some other way that didn't involve other people.

Just my two cents.

 

i agree with woopity too. and think you're totally missing the point brassy. we all agree that, yes, suicide is a horrible thing. but if someone decides the only way to resolve their issues is to take their life, then please don't let it cause an innocent bystander their life, or cause them harm or grief. no one said that his jumping inconvenienced them (you commented on traffic backing up). the issue is that his jumping could have caused some serious accidents, and potentially killed many others. and imagine the traumatic stress that someone driving along in a car (or white truck in this case) that viewed that or, much worse, hit him. i know i personally couldn't deal with that well at all.

 

Anyone remember the jumper on the old Woodrow Wilson bridge a few years ago? That messed up a lot more folks commute than just this guy.

I wonder if the county will charge any and all public services used during this "crisis" back to the jumper. I think that would be an appropriate action to take to discourage this kind of idiocy from occurring again. Not to mention a nice stay in a county facility for "treatment."

I really hope that this doesn't encourage anyone else to use the marvelously engineered flyover in this manner again.

 

I don't think charging him or threatening lock-up will do any good. He was successful in his suicide attempt.

 

Gotcha, missed the died from injuries part. Still, his estate should be charged for the public services consumed during this ordeal.

 

Are you out of your mind? Putting myself in the widow's place, I'm thinking that getting a bill for the cleanup cost from the county would be taken poorly.

On a side topic, I think it's weird that the Sheriff's office policy is not to release the names of suicide victims, out of concern for the family. Doesn't that just perpetuate the idea that having a relative who died from suicide is something shameful to the survivors? Usually, suicide is how people die from depression. If society should be treating depression as any other disease, then shouldn't death from depression be reported the same as death from heart disease or cancer?

 

I would NOT want my relative's name published. If a member of your family is depressed enough to commit suicide and you were unable to stop it- you sometimes feel like you failed them somewhere along the way- that's where the shame is DEEP.

we have personal control over how depression handled once we get it. it's not incurable like some cancers and heart disease issues. it's very hard to treat b/c the individual HAS to choose to fight it and heal themselves, and that's VERY difficult- near impossible for some whose depression is brought on by factors they can't control (bi polar, schizophrenia, other illnesses.)

hopefully the survivors in his family are holding up okay- that's a horrible desperate way to lose someone, especially when you've probably watched them deteriorate over the years and knew the day was coming...

charging his family a clean up bill would only compound the horrible last memory he left his family with... how callous.

 

As opposed to the very public ordeal that this individual brought onto the family. And I am not talking about the "clean up" bill, I am talking about the cost of closing several major roads during rush hour.

By not holding anyone accountable, there is no reason not to consider "jumping off the flyover" if you are contemplating such actions. If the guy was "base-jumping" and failed in the attempt, his estate would have been charged. Why is this scenario any different?