A Spalding father and son turned lifesavers when they helped rescue a man who tried to hang himself from a railway bridge in town.
Mark (41) and Anthony (15) Norman were at home in Green Lane on Saturday morning when they saw a man acting strangely outside their window.
Moments later, Anthony saw the man hanging from a railway bridge in a bid to take his own life. He called police, who arrived at the scene within minutes.
Anthony and his dad helped police officers cut the man down before he was taken to hospital for treatment.
Mark said: “I was cleaning up in the kitchen when my partner saw this man running up and down the street, trying to get into people’s gardens.
“He had a panicked look on his face so I asked my son to go and find out what was wrong with the man.
“My son came back and said there was a man hanging from the bridge, so myself and my partner went up onto the bridge to have a look and we saw a man hanging from one of the girders.
“Just as this happened, a policeman came walking towards us on the bridge and I could see the man’s hands still moving.
“So I shouted to the policeman ‘he’s still alive,’ but the man was hanging from a part of the bridge that wasn’t accessible to us.”
“He had a panicked look on his face so I asked my son to go and find out what was wrong with the man.
“My son came back and said there was a man hanging from the bridge, so myself and my partner went up onto the bridge to have a look and we saw a man hanging from one of the girders.
“Just as this happened, a policeman came walking towards us on the bridge and I could see the man’s hands still moving.
“So I shouted to the policeman ‘he’s still alive,’ but the man was hanging from a part of the bridge that wasn’t accessible to us.”
Mark, his son and the policeman ended up climbing through undergrowth to reach the man and they were eventually joined by another police officer who used a knife to cut the man down.
“When we got to the man, we could see that he was hanging from the girder with blue pallet strapping round his neck and all I could hear was him choking,” Mark said.
“Then a policeman with a knife came onto the railway tracks, climbed up the girder and cut the man down, while me, my son and the other policeman supported him.
“We gently laid him on the ground, one of the policeman got the blue strapping off his neck and asked the man if he could hear him.
“He was unconscious when we lowered him but then he slowly started breathing again, his chest was going in and out.
“Eventually, he stood up and started crying before we went over the railway track and up to Winsover Road where three police cars and an ambulance were waiting.”
The man was finally taken to Pilgrim Hospital, Boston, but he wasn’t seriously injured.
Mark said: “If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of my partner looking out of the window and bringing my attention to this man, he could have died.”
A Lincolnshire Police spokesman said: “We received a call at 8.14am about an incident on Green Lane, Spalding, and the 34-year-old man in questions was checked over at hospital before being left in the care of professionals.”