FOUR police officers have been recognised for helping to save a woman\u2019s life.<\/p>\n
Det Sgt Andy Drake, Det Insp Greg Wood, PC Darren Smith and PC Tony Mowling received commendations presented by the Chief Constable for their bravery. They had helped an emotionally distressed woman who was found at the top of the multi-storey car park in Chelmsford threatening to jump.<\/p>\n
PC Mowling and PC Smith were first on the scene and endeavoured to calm the woman down to try to find out why she was so distressed. Both PCs spoke with her until two trained hostage and crisis negotiators arrived on the top floor with them.<\/p>\n
PC Smith said: \u201cWe were alerted by CCTV that a lady was on the top floor, myself and Tony made our way there and from there we were able to see that she was very, very close to the edge. She was holding onto a lightening strip that was only held on by pins and she was teetering over the edge.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman would not allow PC Smith or PC Mowling to get any closer to her and both had to negotiate with the woman whilst communicating to other officers.<\/p>\n
The officers negotiated with the woman for two hours and through compassionate conversation with her were able to persuade her not to harm herself whilst the negotiators were close enough to pull her back to safety.<\/p>\n
Det Sgt Drake said: \u201cAfter around an hour of negotiation she was beginning to physically deteriorate and I was concerned that she would fall. I was able to negotiate and get myself into a position where I was confident I would be able to take hold of her.\u00a0 Greg and I then grabbed her, just before we thought she was going to fall.”<\/p>\n
Det Insp Wood said: \u201cWe chatted to her for a little while and normally we would try to chat with her and try to encourage them to come down but she was teetering really close to the edge and even if she didn\u2019t want to jump she was probably going to fall. Andy and I saw an opportunity and grabbed her. Luckily it worked which was fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh said: \u201cWe\u2019ve got a brilliant bunch of people here today\u2026 they tried to do what they could to help her and when they had to, they grabbed hold of her to make sure she wasn\u2019t going to go over the edge. A life changed, brave, decisive, that\u2019s what Essex police does so well.\u201d<\/p>\n
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FOUR police officers have been recognised for helping to save a woman\u2019s life. Det Sgt Andy Drake, Det Insp Greg Wood, PC Darren Smith and PC Tony Mowling received commendations\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2568,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions\/2568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}