Police save suicidal girl by tying her wrists with belts

THIS is the dramatic moment when police rescued a woman who was standing on a ledge 60 feet above live railway tracks and threatening to jump, it emerged yesterday.

The CCTV pictures show how officers managed to hold on to the 20-year-old woman for 50 minutes after lassoing their trouser belts around her wrists.

Police were called to reports of a woman standing on a three-inch ledge over railway lines close to the Millard Terrace Shopping Mall in Dagenham, east London, on Sunday.

She was trapped behind a 70ft security fence, which she is thought to have scaled, while district line Underground and C2C suburban trains passed underneath her.

A quick-thinking officer removed his belt and made a lasso to snare one of the woman’s wrists in case she slipped from the ledge.

The woman co-operated with police and another officer was able to tie a belt round her other wrist.

Within moments, police said, the victim had lost her grip on the ledge and was hanging by the straps with the officers grasping the other ends.

Sergeant Brian Fry and PC Jennifer Smith desperately held on to the woman until local parks police arrived with specialist cutting equipment and sliced through the metal fencing.

The woman was pulled to safety and taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.

Inspector Hugh Boyle, who oversaw the rescue, said: “This was a brilliant example of officers remaining calm and thinking on their feet.”