23-year-old Sarah may still be a trainee officer, but she has already received her first award. When an asylum seeker recently threatened to jump off the viaduct over the A2 at Maarheeze, the student managed to talk him into talking. “I didn’t hesitate for a second.”
Sarah remembers exactly what happened that particular day a few weeks ago. “I had just finished work, had already turned off my postage and put away my weapon. I was just about to go home when I saw a number of colleagues hanging over their postage. The word ‘Arabic’ came up a few times.”
“Guys, I’ll pack my things and we’ll go that way.”
Sarah, with her Egyptian descent, immediately caught on. “I quickly understood that there was someone on the viaduct and that they needed help from someone who spoke Arabic. At that moment I didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘Guys, I’ll pack my things and we’re going that way.'”
She didn’t have time to come up with a strategy. “We were there within a minute or two.” Not that Sarah let that put her off. “A lot of colleagues were already there. I immediately went to the person in charge and told them how we would go about it. I would try to make contact with the man and if he didn’t want us to come closer, we wouldn’t either. to do.”
And so it happened. “I slowly walked up to him and tried to talk to him. Because the highway was not yet closed at that time, I could barely understand him at first.” Within a meter or two of the man, a conversation eventually started. “I told him that he has beautiful qualities and that he can make something of his life. When he started to cry, I was afraid for a moment that he would jump.”
It didn’t get that far. The man repented when Sarah turned to his faith. “He was Islamic, I was Coptic-Orthodox. Suicide is prohibited in both faiths. He ultimately proved me right.”
Not long after, the man stepped away from the ledge. “That was a great relief. He told me he was desperate and did it because the bucket overflowed completely. Afterwards he was very grateful that I had woken him up in our conversation.”
“My classmates were super proud.”
Looking back on those minutes, Sarah realizes how important her role was. “At the right time in the right place? I certainly think so. Normally you have a team of negotiators in the police for these kinds of situations. But they happened to be half an hour away. Good thing, because they probably had an interpreter Then you miss that emotional connection.”
Sarah’s special act has not gone unnoticed by her colleagues. Last Wednesday she received a special award: the blue heart. “A great honor. And a surprise, because they had lured me to that location with an excuse.”
Sarah’s classmates are also impressed. “Initially they mainly wanted to know how I was doing. But of course they also thought it was very special that I already experienced this during the training. And they were very proud.”