Cleveland Sports Forum

There is a 15 year old girl who seemingly has committed suicide out here this week.

She was originally reported as "missing."

Investigators have learned she rode her mountain bike down a trail called "The Iron Horse Trail" that I have biked for nature and relaxation and enjoyment multiple times. She biked it for 9 miles to get to the BART train station in our town in the post dawn hours this past Monday.

She then boarded the train where I often do....with her bike.....at a morning hour that she should have looked out of place to business commuters at a time that full size bikes are not supposed to be on the trains during commute hours.

She looked every bit of a young 15, and most every business commuter should have wondered..... on what would have been a crowded commute train.... why this girl was there at that time on a school day.

Maybe someone ....maybe someone engaged her in conversation.....but if so, no one has stepped forward.

She road that train for 40 minutes, likely with the opportunity to see gentle deer that are frequently visible on the coast hillsides along the tracks in the early morning. My wife used to count them when she rode the morning commute in days of yore, and she would report to me her glee in seeing them.

I have had my bikes on that train multiple times on my bike rides through San Francisco and across The Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito.


The 15 year old girl got off the train just as it exited the tunnel under The Bay and stopped at the first stop in The City.

From there she once more mounted her bike and pedaled another 6 miles or so along the beautiful and scenic Embarcardero, and along a route I have walked, jogged and ridden and talked about here many times to the area of the base of The Golden Gate Bridge.

When I travel the route, it's a majestic and normally spiritual journey for me. I once spied a whale along the way, and I always love seeing the dogs frolicking in one of the few areas pets and owners together can enjoy the sand and water.

After the 15 year old girl completed that particular 6 mile ride that I have always enjoyed so much, she parked her Diamond mountain bike....locking her bike and helmet in a Golden Gate Bridge tourist center parking lot rack.

Daily security video from both sides of The Golden Gate Bridge captured her walking onto the bridge shortly after 10AM on Monday.

But did not ever capture her walking off.

Authorities will not say if they have video of her departing into the waters 200 feet below.

She was a star member of the swim team at her high school in an affluent suburb out here.

5' 8" and 130 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Academically talented the school administration now says.

I have traveled the route she took.....and I have traveled it with so much enjoyment over the years.

In retrospect, shortly after dawn on Monday she rode her bike at least 15 miles, road a train for near 45 minutes, and after her last bike ride segment she tidied up with a lock of her bike....

....and then jumped off The Golden Gate Bridge.

She was certainly resolute in her objective.

Poor damned stupid girl.

My concern... as one that is among the living..... is that her living classmates are pining and sensationalizing her motives and means and her demise.

Sad story Cali! I have fond memories of that stretch of the of the Bay and up to the Golden Gate Bridge. I used to love to run over the bridge as the sun was coming up to shed light on The City. You will miss SF when you leave.

Would a Suicide Barrier on the Golden Gate Save Lives?

In wake of Danville teen's apparent death, a Walnut Creek-based expert on Golden Gate Bridge suicides says many deaths could have been prevented, but no money has been set aside for a net approved three years ago.

By Martha Ross

Allison Bayliss seemed determined to end her life at the Golden Gate Bridge—an international icon and the world’s No. 1 site for suicide.

The 15-year-old San Ramon Valley High School student searched for directions to the bridge on her computer. On Monday morning, she apparently rode her mountain bike nine miles from her Danville home to the Dublin BART station and took a train to San Francisco’s Embarcadero station, where a BART security camera snapped a photo of her wheeling her bike through the exit gates.

It looks like she rode the bike eight miles or so to Fort Point and locked it to a parking lot rack, leaving her helmet beside it. She was seen on the bridge about 10 a.m. Monday but wasn’t seen leaving it, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The bridge walkway is edged by a 4-foot-high rail. It stands 220 feet above San Francisco Bay. A fall at that height lasts four seconds, and a person usually dies after hitting the water at about 75 mph.

At this point, nothing has been made public about Bayliss’ state of mind in the months, weeks, days and hours leading to her apparent leap.

But if the bridge weren’t there, would the teen have considered taking her life? If it wasn’t so easy for her to walk onto the bridge and jump because no safety barriers are in place, would she have tried other means?

And did her age and apparently high-functioning life in an affluent suburb contribute to her vulnerability to an impulsive yet final and destructive act?

A Walnut Creek-based expert on suicide and people in crisis and the author of a soon-to-be-published book about Golden Gate Bridge suicides said he cannot comment directly on the case. But John Bateson and other advocates for a suicide barrier contend that many of the 1,550 confirmed suicides at the bridge since it opened in 1937 could have been prevented if the bridge had a barrier in place.

Bateson, the executive director of the Contra Costa Crisis Center, cites evidence in his book, The Final Leap, that disputes the commonly held notion that people would just find other ways to kill themselves if the bridge weren't an option.

“It’s grand and it’s glorious,” he said, explaining the allure of one of the world’s great architectural wonders to people in a spiral of self-destructive anguish.“You may have felt isolated and alone in life but in death you’re joining this whole society of people in pain and in their exit strategy.”

He said that most Bay Area residents know of someone who has died jumping off the bridge and that most victims are from the nine Bay Area counties.

Moreover, teenagers like Bayliss, who was on her high school’s junior varsity swim team and was said by San Ramon Valley Unified School District officials to be doing well academically, are often at the greatest risk of suicide.

“One of the myths of youth suicide is that it’s the kids in trouble, using and abusing alcohol or drugs who are most at risk,” Bateson said. “The most at-risk are the so-called ‘good’ kids, the straight-A students who have never failed a test or had someone break up with them. They haven’t developed the coping skills so that when something happens, it takes on an even greater significance. … And, teenagers, there are so many emotional issues around that time. Loved ones may not be able to distinguish between what is typical teen angst and what are signs of serious indications of suicidal intent.”

Suicidal people typically don’t want to die, they just want their anguish to end. Using an analogy to explain suicidal thinking, Bateson tells people to think about what it’s like to slam a door on a finger. “The pain is immediate and takes over everything in the body,” he said. “You’re not thinking about anything else. That’s an analogy for talking about people who are suicidal.”

About 30 people commit suicide each year on the bridge and 70 attempt it. Bateson said it is “appalling” that there has been so little political will, notably by the Golden Gate bridge district, to erect a barrier. The CHP first asked bridge authorities to install safety fencing on the bridge in 1939. The roster of victims includes young children — one as young as 2 — who were thrown off the bridge by suicidal parents who then jumped after them.

“They take precautions for people who are physically disabled, and they put up bike barriers, even though there has never been a bicycle fatality, but they don’t take steps to make the bridge safe for people who are mentally ill,” Bateson said.

He noted that the bridge district is spending money to refurbish its visitors' center for the bridge’s 75th anniversary in 2012, but it has yet to secure any of the $45 million it would cost to erect a suicide “net” it approved in 2008. The metal net would hang 20 feet below the bridge railings, supported by steel ribs and suspended beneath the walkways on both sides of the bridge, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.

A bridge district statement said it has not secured funding and that it is against board policy to use bridge tolls to pay for the net.

Paul Muller, a board member of Bridge Rail Foundation, an all-volunteer organization made up of family members of bridge suicide victims and mental health, legal and public affairs professionals, said the district has not even obtained final engineering drawings. His is the only group actively seeking funding for the net.

Top bridge officials have told Bateson that any kind of barrier is probably five years or more away. Yes, the cost is high, but he said it would be a one-time cost.

Another major argument from barrier opponents is that it could ruin the Art Deco structure’s aesthetics and spectacular views. Many don't want to acknowledge that one of the nation’s great tourist attractions has such a lethal history.

Finally, there is the commonly held idea that people who want to kill themselves will find some way to do it. That is, if Plan A — jumping off the bridge — won’t work, they'll go to Plan B, Bateson said.

Myth: They'll Find a Way Anyway

He said that idea runs counter to numerous studies on suicide and on people who have considered ending their lives at the bridge, as well as research on well-known landmarks around the world that have erected suicide barriers and have eliminated suicides and attempted suicides.

In 1978, U.C. Berkeley psychology professor Richard Seiden published a study that asked, “Will a person who is prevented from suicide in one location inexorably tend to attempt and commit suicide elsewhere?” He and his graduate students tracked down 515 people who had attempted suicide at the bridge. Twenty-five years later, 94 percent were still alive or had died by means other than suicide. Only 6 percent had taken their lives.

Seiden concluded that people who are fixated on killing themselves also fixate on the method. “They might have a Plan A, but there’s no Plan B,” Seiden told the New York Times Magazine, according to Bateson. “They don’t say, ‘Well, I can’t jump, so now I’m going to shoot myself.’ ”

In his book, Bateson cited several examples of bridges and other structures that had been magnets for suicidal people until barriers were erected.

“The bridge experience, as reported in Maine, Washington, D.C., Canada, the U.K., Australia and elsewhere is the same,” the Rail Foundation’s website said. “Restrict easy access and lives are saved.”

The number of suicides at the Duke Ellington Bridge in Washington, D.C., plummeted to one five years after an 8-foot-high suicide fence was constructed in 1986. The fence went up following the deaths of 24 people between 1979 and 1985 and after three suicides in a 10-day period. Bateson noted that there was no subsequent increase in the number of suicides from the nearby Taft Bridge, which doesn’t have a barrier.

In 2005, Bateson said, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of suicide prevention strategies and concluded that the two most effective ways to save people's lives are to restrict access to lethal means—such as spectacular bridges from which to jump —and to train health-care professionals to recognize warning signs and to intervene.

Restricting access to “lethal means” allows time for the suicidal person to reach out, call a suicide prevention hot line, or for others to spot warning signs and intervene, said the state Department of Mental Health’s 2008 “Strategic Plan on Suicide Prevention." That time can allow for the self-destructive impulse to subside while the person receives treatment, the plan said.

That's been the experience of a significant majority of the 32 people who are known to have survived Golden Gate Bridge jumps, Bateson said. Only three subsequently committed suicide.

The survivors include two teenagers who jumped from the bridge in March and April and were immediately rescued by people surfing and sailing nearby. One was a 17-year-old Windsor boy who jumped in front a stunned group of classmates. He boasted to classmates on the bus ride to San Francisco that he was going to jump "for kicks."

In April, a 16-year-old Southern California girl was rescued by former Walnut Creek Mayor Merle Hall and his son Eric Hall and grandsons, who live in Alamo. They had been out sailing.

Another survivor is Kevin Hines, who visited San Ramon Valley High last week to tell his story and spread awareness that “suicide is never the solution to any problem.”

As he told his story about surviving a suicide attempt when he was a teen by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, many students were reduced to tears. It's not known whether Bayliss was in the audience, said school district spokesman Terry Koehne.

Hines, through his publicist, declined to comment for this article, saying "the attention should not be on him but the community and its grief." Bateson disputed the idea that talking about suicide "plants" the idea in someone's mind.

"This same fear isn’t raised in regards to (talking about) drinking, drugs, smoking or unprotected sex," said Bateson, whose book will be published early next year. "In those cases it’s presumed that talking about the problem helps bring it out in the open where it can be addressed. Suicide is different, though. It’s so taboo that people don’t want to acknowledge it, much less discuss it."

Everyone have an enjoyable and safe holiday.

Thanks to all that are `serving' and have `served' our country !

GO TRIBE!!!

One time when I was visiting SF, I was hanging around the Presidio by Golden Gate . I saw a splash in the water just below the bridge and thought it was unusual. Next day in the newspaper it turned out to be someone who committed suicide.

Very creepy.

BTW- My grandmother once gave me a small piece of wood, a souvenir that was used as part of the walkway during construction of the bridge.

Be glad you just saw the splash, RR. I once saw a man jump off a building right across the street from me and not a thing about it that was not horrible and burned in my memory.

Me and a couple co-workers stood there for 10 to 15 minutes watching and waiting for him to jump. We humans sure are a weird species.

Just a drive by post, but I am very much opposed to a higher barrier or a jump net on The Golden Gate bridge. I've been of the school of thought that if The Golden Gate Bridge is "suicide proofed," people will just go to one of the tall buildings in San Francisco or drive or bike off of a Pacific Coast Highway cliff or something.

No need to add new items to an architectural beauty.

That said, I did see a story today that at first glance seem well researched and written on the topic. I'll try to remember to share later.

Tribe Fan in SC/Cali wrote:
That said, I did see a story today that at first glance seem well researched and written on the topic. I'll try to remember to share later.

You mean the one I posted?

Yep, JR.... You posted the one I saw in our local website for the town.

First time at yours I didn't see the Myth: They'll Find a Way Anyway section and it was just a quick read on both.

A quote from a researcher in that article:


Seiden concluded that people who are fixated on killing themselves also fixate on the method. “They might have a Plan A, but there’s no Plan B,” Seiden told the New York Times Magazine, according to Bateson. “They don’t say, ‘Well, I can’t jump, so now I’m going to shoot myself.’ ”


My wife and I saw George Carlin in Reno maybe less than two years before he died. He was good of course, but that particular show was the darkest I ever saw Carlin. He did several minutes "of comedy" on how someone thinking of suicide goes through the process of determining the method.

That was the same night that Carlin early in his show barked at a supposed heckler (I never heard him and it was a relatively small room) and ordered security to remove him immediately.

I sold my A's-Yankme's tix to a guy I arranged to meet at the "Willie Mays Statue" at AT&T Park today. His 8 year old kid is unfortunately a Yankees fan.

Afterwards I walked down The Embarcadero and had a pastrami with grilled onion and swiss on a sourdough French roll.
Perfect.

Uncle Dennis wrote:Sad story Cali! I have fond memories of that stretch of the of the Bay and up to the Golden Gate Bridge. I used to love to run over the bridge as the sun was coming up to shed light on The City. You will miss SF when you leave.

Yes, there is no place I've ever been or lived that has the offerings of San Francisco.

That said, I've been lots of places that offer things San Francisco does not offer and I've found ways to enjoy those places just as much.

For just one example, rural New England is the absolute best place to be on planet Earth in my opinion during the 2nd week of October.

For two, in South Carolina I could run my boat at 2/3 throttle at 10PM wearing nothing but a wet pair of swim trunks and still be warm from mid-June to late September. That's an experience I miss greatly.

And some of my favorite easily doable hiking of all the places I have hiked from Alaska to Utah and to The Smokies......has been right in The Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

This week, Indianapolis is a marvelous place to be in many ways.

I could go on and on.

Heck, even northern Fichigan on a fresh water lake in August has merit.

Damn!


I was rocking out on an old Rockford Files episode I found on a channel I never knew before tonight existed! The episode is "to be continued!!!"

I loved The Rockford Files. When I lived in Miami FL it was shown right after the daily race replays from Gulfstream, Hialeah and Calder. Tonight was a hoot seeing the circa 1975 high speed computer equipment track down the owner of the car. Reel and loop by Control Data on a 6 inch monochrome screen!

If I had to list one thing in life I always wanted but haven't gotten or done......besides racing a horse.........is to have that Jim Rockford gold Firebird.

Because of that show I decided I wanted a PI license. I was working towards it when a salty old cop I worked with while I did the elementary plainclothes stuff at Sears while teaching high school told me all I would be doing as a Private Investigator was getting cases doing surveillance in messy divorces. I believed him.

That was the same year I was accepted to Air Force Officer Candidate School....and The Peace Corps.

I ended up doing none of the above. It was a good year though.

The 32 years thereafter have worked out just fine in my book.

Flash mob moved to 12:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... d8ppk0UCx8

Somewhat more bearable than the guys on the ski lift, but getting old fast!