This was one week ago and I keep thinking about it. Now back in the UK but it keeps popping back into my mind. I have family history of suicide and suicide attempts so perhaps this is why it has affected me so much, or maybe it would affect anyone like this, but I’m not sure what to do about it.
What happened was I was shopping in a large shopping and cinema complex, which was 5 floors tall and was built with the shops in a horseshoe shape around an open central interior that went all the way from the top floor to the basement floor level. There was a wall and railing acting as a safety divider from the walkway along the shops and this open area. I was on the 4th floor (the floors are very tall to accommodate the shops, and the top floor is a cinema) close to closing time, and this shop was at the end of the horseshoe shape and a little bit deserted outside, and the lights were somewhat dimmed as it was nearly closing time.
As I was leaving the shop with the things I had just purchased, I noticed a backpack discarded against the walkway dividing wall which runs along the open central area. I thought immediately, this is odd, you don’t see bags just dumped like this so it was abnormal. I stopped and looked around, and at the end of the walkway, in the dimly lit corner against the glass elevator shaft that goes up to the cinema, on the other side of the dividing wall was a young man stood on a tiny ledge gripping the railing. He kept looking down at the massive drop below him, running his hand through his hair, looking back down, etc.
My immediate first thought was omg, he’s thinking of jumping. Then my brain tried to rationalise it and thought, no maybe he’s doing parkour (!!!), then back to no…he’s thinking of jumping. I froze and didn’t know what to do. I thought, should I run back into the store and try to explain in my extremely bad foreign language skills that a young man was about to commit suicide. But then I thought, would that spook him? Would he jump in the time I was gone? Then I thought, should I approach him, but again language skills are terrible, and again, would I spook him into jumping? So I stood there frozen with all of these thoughts running through my head, with what must have been a look of panic / shock / distress etc on my face, and he noticed me standing there watching him. He looked down again, seemed to panic a bit, then after a few attempts, got a foot hold back up onto the railing and pulled himself back up over the wall. He ran past me with his head down, grabbed his bag, and ran off.
I went down to the bottom area where he would have landed and it was a horrific drop, and there were still a lot of people there including families with children. I think about how close he came to jumping, the impact on the people and children, and also he could have landed on someone and killed them as well (which has happened in previous jumping suicides). I also think about how I just froze and did essentially nothing.
Should I write to this shopping complex to let them know what happened? I would have to use Google translate etc but I could get the message across. Would they even be able to do anything to stop this in the future?