Praise for sergeant who saved suicidal woman

A CHELMSFORD police officer has been praised after he brought a suicidal woman down from the ledge of a multi-storey car park.

City response officer Sgt Paul Gooding, 41, was on duty when a woman climbed over the 12-foot safety barrier of the Meadows Q-Park car park off Baddow Road.

The officer, who has been at Essex Police for 12 years and Chelmsford for seven, said: “There was no way you could get to her because she was the other side of a 12-foot fence.

“She was sat on the ledge. I approached her really slowly, gave her my name and took my hat off and tried to make myself not like a police officer.

“She was really hard to talk to and very hard to get any eye contact with her.”

The Meadows Q-Park car park faces out on to Baddow Road and the busy Odeon Roundabout on Parkway, presenting another difficulty for the officers while dealing with the emergency.

“It was a really busy intersection and she had a really big audience after a while,” continued Sgt Gooding, who is not a trained negotiator. However, 30 minutes after he arrived, he had help from a team of negotiators. But, the woman only wanted to talk to Paul.

“I said ‘I’m here with you, I can help you fight this. Come on, give me your hand, I can help you.’ She grabbed out at my hand and it was a positive sign that she wanted me there,” he told the Essex Live website.

“I said ‘when we get down I will stay with you’ and I did. I went in the back of the ambulance and we took her down to Rochford. It was five hours total, but worth every minute. I was just pleased and happy the way it went in the end. I had a little bit of pride and I was completely exhausted.”

Amazing work from Sgt Gooding.

To read the story in full, go to: http://www.essexlive.news/chelmsford-cop-helped-talk-down-woman-from-multi-storey-car-park/story-29701469-detail/story.html#hE3ecQrIIyoxl2zK.99