A New Jersey state trooper is being praised for saving a woman who was threatening to jump from a concrete barrier on the Garden State Parkway.
Detective Anthony Giunta says that he got the call around 1:20 a.m. Wednesday that there was a distraught woman standing on a concrete barrier 40 feet in the air on the Parkway in East Orange. A witness told troopers that the woman appeared to be crying and looked like she was about to jump.
“I tried to establish some kind of communication with her,” Giunta says. “It was stop-and-go for a little bit and then thereafter I had a number of other troopers arrive on scene.”
Officials say that when Giunta and other troopers arrived the woman was sitting on the barrier with her legs hanging over the edge.
Dashcam video shows some of the troopers speaking with the woman. And then Giunta takes an opening to save her.
“I noticed that at one point she would put her arms over her head in a sign of frustration, maybe. When she did that I noticed I was out of her line of sight. I had an opportunity. She couldn’t see me coming. I just went for it,” Giunta says.
While the woman was distracted, Giunta grabs her and pulls her down off the ledge.
“We are happy that it ended the way it did. Nobody got hurt and hopefully she gets the help she needs,” Giunta says.
The woman was then taken to Mountainside Hospital for evaluation.