Passersby save woman from leaping off Louise Bridge

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This article was published 08/01/2020 (1850 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A routine afternoon behind the wheel for volunteer rideshare driver Bessie Johnston came to a grinding halt on the Louise Bridge Saturday when she threw her vehicle into park to curb a crisis.

Johnston is a driver for the non-profit organization Ikwe Safe Rides: Women Helping Women, which connects volunteer female drivers with women passengers who pay for trips by donation.

She had just picked up a rider in the mid-afternoon and was heading south over the bridge that connects Elmwood and Point Douglas when she saw a woman hoist herself over the chain link fencing between the pedestrian walkway and the icy Red River.

“We both saw this lady on the bridge and she was trying to get a leg over,” Johnston said. “Right away I stopped and I got out of the vehicle and started yelling at her, ‘No don’t do that!’

“I went out of my vehicle, whether other vehicles were stopping or not, I didn’t even care about my life. I just wanted to save that woman from jumping.”

She darted across oncoming traffic towards the east side of the two-lane bridge and joined another passerby who had also abandoned his vehicle to come to the woman’s aid.

“He held her, and he was actually losing her,” she recalled. “He said he needed help, so I jumped over (the traffic barrier) to the other side and grabbed that lady, and we put her on the right side of the bridge.”

A small group of people who’d gotten out of their vehicles helped hold the woman back from the edge of the bridge until emergency responders arrived. The whole incident unfolded in about five minutes. Police called Johnston later that day to let her know the woman was safe.

Johnston said there wasn’t a moment of hesitation in deciding to intervene.

“The only thing I could think of was to stop the vehicle and get to that woman before she could…” she said, trailing off. “If it would have been a second later, she would have been gone.”

Christine Brouzes, co-director of Ikwe Safe Rides, was not surprised by Johnston’s decisive actions or that she would prioritize someone in need over her own safety.

“We are the kind of group of women that tend to want to run towards a situation and be helpful,” Brouzes said. “We are literally saving lives sometimes: when we’re taking a woman home from a distressing situation or giving her a ride for free instead of her choosing to walk home and be picked up by a stranger.”

Since it was founded in 2016, Ikwe has provided nearly 100,000 rides and currently has 50 volunteer drivers, Brouzes said.

“Just because Bessie was out and about and having her personality, she potentially saved a life or saved someone from great harm,” Brouzes said.

“I’m just happy I was there at the right time,” Johnston said. “And I’m just happy for all the people that stopped that day. We all saved her life together.”

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca