Over the course of the last month, Michael Blackmore—a police officer with the Columbia Police Department in Columbia, S.C.—has convinced not one but two different people to think twice about jumping to their likely deaths. The Statereports that Blackmore was able to stop a man from jumping off a parking garage in August, and early last Saturday morning, he was also able to talk another man out of jumping off a bridge. In both cases, he used football to help the men come to their senses.
In the first situation, Blackmore discovered that the man who was considering jumping off a garage is a Notre Dame football fan. He spoke with him about it for several minutes, and eventually, he was able to talk the man down off the ledge. And in the most recent situation, he learned that a man who was crying while sitting on a railing on a bridge is a fan of both the South Carolina Gamecocks football team and the Washington Redskins. So he used that to talk to the man about his future.
"You’re just having a bad night tonight," Blackmore told the man. "But tomorrow, when you’re sitting around and you’re watching the Gamecocks—or on Sunday when you’re watching the Redskins play or whatever—you’ll look back [like], 'Man, what was I thinking Friday night?' You’re just having a bad night."
Eventually, Blackmore and two of his fellow CPD police officers were able to get the man down off the railing and save his life. And as you can see in the video above, football was at the center of it all. Without it, both scenarios Blackmore was involved in could have ended much differently.
