American man, 92, hailed a hero

A 92-year-old man is up for a police award because he helped wrestle a suicidal man from the edge of a bridge and restrained him until police arrived.

George Kouloheras was driving to a grocery store in Lowell, Massachusetts, on Saturday when he stopped his car to help Bob Michalczyk pull the distraught man off the bridge’s railing. The suicidal man was not identified.

“I jumped him from behind and this other fellow got him from the front,” Kouloheras said. “I got him down and sat on him. He wanted to get up, but I told him: ’No, no. Stay down’.”

Patrolman Dan Brady arrived to find Michalczyk pinning the man to the ground, holding his shoulders, and Kouloheras kneeling alongside trying to talk the man out of jumping.

Brady said he would seek citizen citations for Kouloheras and Michalczyk, 42.

Kouloheras has been a hero before. Eighty years ago, as a 12-year-old scout, he rescued an infant from a burning building.