Suicide Prevention and Missing Persons: Recognizing Warning Signs
By: Shane Lambert
Original publication date: August 19th, 2026
- Disclaimer: This article is based on my personal recollections and firsthand observations of two incidents. The people involved are not identified, and some details are necessarily presented from my perspective. Where I describe conclusions or interpretations that I could not verify at the time, I identify them as my observations or inferences rather than established facts.
- Content warning: This article discusses suicide attempts and suicide prevention. It does not describe suicide methods in detail and is intended to examine warning signs, intervention, and the connection between suicide and missing-person cases. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or are concerned that someone else may be in immediate danger, contact emergency services or a crisis service in your area.
- Author's Note: I have intentionally altered certain identifying details, including dates and timeframes. Consequently, some dates and other details in this article are not factually accurate representations of when the events occurred. The changes I make deliberately are superficial and are not made to enhance any argument or point I make. My rationale for using real events that involve other people is that the reader must know that the matters raised are real ones to make practical assessments. Comments are turned off for this blog post.
The Connection Between Suicide and Missing-Person Cases
Missing people and suicide are connected topics. The clearest connection is that a person who dies by suicide may become a missing person when their final location ends up being unknown. In some cases, therefore, a suicide can produce the same unanswered question that defines a missing-person case: where did the person go?
This article examines that connection with a backdrop of two personal experiences of mine. There have been two times when I have been in close proximity to someone at risk of suicide in the very immediate future — in both cases, within minutes. These are not hypothetical scenarios or reflective of guesswork. In both instances, I was a primary witness to events that were subsequently confirmed to have involved a suicide attempt.
The first incident occurred in Edmonton in the 1990s, when I encountered a woman on the High Level Bridge. The second incident occurred in the 2020s on the Oak Street Bridge between Vancouver and Richmond. It's this latter incident that motivated some thoughts on suicide and missing people.
The two experiences raised questions, some of which I will examine:
- What should a passerby do when the evidence of a suicide attempt is ambiguous?
- How should unusual circumstances be interpreted without jumping to conclusions?
- Does the arrival of police create a moment of heightened danger?
- And when a bridge connects two municipalities, can the process of determining which police service should respond introduce unnecessary delay?
My main argument is that people who are trying to prevent suicide need to recognize that warning signs may be indirect, ambiguous, and easy to dismiss — but that acting on a reasonable concern may prevent both a death and a future missing-person case. Since both cases I recollect are set on bridges, the insight may be limited to that kind of suicide location.
Suicide prevention does not directly solve existing missing-person cases. But it can prevent some of those cases from ever coming into existence. If a person dies by suicide and their body cannot immediately be located, their family and investigators may be left with a missing-person investigation that could potentially last for years, decades, or never get resolved. Preventing the suicide eliminates that possibility altogether.
The two incidents that I explore are very different, but both involved a bridge as a setting for a suicide attempt, myself as the first person on the scene who was aware of a potential suicide attempt, the police converging on the scene later, and the police later vindicating my original hunch about what I could only call a potential suicide attempt in real time.
The two different cases and discussion support the mandate of this blog: the opportunity to prevent a future missing-person case does, in fact, help solve existing cases. I think I can prove this a priori. But recognizing an unusual situation requires learning what was successful in the past.
1990s Edmonton High Level Bridge Suicide Attempt
An Eyewitness Account from Edmonton's High Level Bridge
The first time I saw someone attempt to commit suicide on a bridge was in the 1990's. It happened in Edmonton, Alberta, on the High Level Bridge. This was before the current era where there are now really high suicide guard rails.
I lived in the Strathcona area at that time of my life. I was walking home one night along the pedestrian path on the west side of the bridge when I noticed an article of clothing and a purse hanging from a rail post. From my vantage point, the rail was tall enough to hide the person who had climbed over it, partly because of her short stature. When I got closer, that was when I noticed her in what was a memorable moment for me.
Recognizing Personal Belongings as a Possible Warning Sign
The AI image below is meant to help the reader picture the scene I encountered.
The image, which is from ChatGPT, does not depict the High Level Bridge's likeness well, nor does it depict Edmonton well. However, those details are not that important for this article. It does depict the scene in substance.
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| AI-generated illustration depicting the circumstances described in the 1997 High Level Bridge account. It is not a reconstruction of the actual scene, and the bridge and surrounding Edmonton landscape are not depicted accurately. |
What the image above depicts is the discovery of someone's personal articles in circumstances that warrant taking a closer look at the surrounding area. If you ever cross a bridge and encounter a scene like this, check the other side of the rail before simply assuming that someone forgot their belongings there. Admittedly, that someone had left their belongings behind was my first thought that night.
If you discover a scene like this, the person may have already jumped. In any event, this is a fair reason to contact the authorities even if it is not conclusive evidence of a suicide or suicide attempt. If the person is still alive and has not jumped, it's possible that the clothing and purse might be the "call for help" that suicidal people are known for. In that case, the articles are meant for a passerby to notice.
Encountering the Woman on the Other Side of the Rail
When I got closer, I saw the woman on the other side of the rail, and it was immediately clear that she was in danger. There was only an inch or two of space for her to stand on the far side, with her heels supported by the narrow ledge while her toes extended beyond the edge.
At that time, I remembered thinking that she wasn't serious. That was not a mature thought but one that came from the fact that I was only in my early 20s. When I've reflected on this moment, as I have every time I've walked across that bridge, I've admitted that the act of climbing over the rail signified significant indifference to her own well-being. If she fell, then she would die for certain, and there was not enough space for someone to stand on the other side of the rail with full support for their feet.
When I spotted the woman, I spoke to her. A little while later, the police arrived. Some of the other pedestrians must have called 9-1-1. I had tried to alert them to the situation as they passed by, but cell phones were not that common back then.
Police Arrival and a Dangerous Moment
The most dangerous moment, aside from the original act of trying to balance in the confined space on the other side of the rail, was when the police actually arrived. The woman let go, at least with one hand, and I grabbed her and held her to the rail. I can't say for certain if she let go with both hands.
The police response was objectively a rescue operation. But how police can arrive quickly at a suicide scene without causing panic in the suicidal person is a dilemma, in my view. The greater good, as I see it, is that they must arrive as quickly as possible, with their emergency lights flashing so that other drivers are aware of their approach. Yet their sirens and flashing lights can be experienced very differently from the other side of the situation: someone who is about to attempt suicide might see them the way a swimmer sees a dorsal fin. The only way I can think of when it comes to rectifying this dilemma is for the person already at the scene to be aware that you might need to grab the person as the police arrive.
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| AI-generated image. |
These moments were traumatic for me as I struggled to hold her in an awkward position that involved me reaching over a rail that was at about the level of my armpits. Afterward, I wondered what would have happened if she was able to get free.
In particular, I imagined having to grab her long black hair as my only option available in the moment immediately after she escaped my grip. In that event, the full weight of gravity in relation to her body weight would then be acting on her hair follicles and roots. I've imagined watching her fall with her bloodied hair in my grip, so there is some potential for trauma when you intervene as the only difference between life and death at -9.81 meters per second per second toward the grassy and paved area below.
But before anything traumatic could affect me at that young age, at least two burly police officers secured the woman. From that point onward, she had no chance of killing herself that night.
Lessons from the Edmonton Bridge Incident
While I was speaking to the woman, I never really had the impression that she was about to jump, which I now attribute to my youth. Once someone has placed themselves in such a dangerous position, all it may take is a moment of panic, a blankness of the mind, or impaired judgment for the situation to change. Even if it's all a bluff, she could die accidentally once she surmounts the railing.
I think the two takeaways from this event are simply recognizing both the clothing and purse as significant. On a bridge, the discovery of articles hanging on the rail means the rail and/or the area below need to be examined. Furthermore, as the police converged on the scene, a particularly dangerous moment developed.
As for a connection to the missing people topic, this woman's remains would have been discovered for sure. She wasn't going to land in the North Saskatchewan River from her chosen spot. She would have been found in a fairly well-used recreational area below. However, if she had no identification in her articles or on her person, then she could have been a Jane Doe and therefore missing to those who knew her.
Subsequent police communication marked the event as a suicide attempt in what was a naivety-bubble-popping moment in my young-adult life.
2020s Oak Street Bridge Suicide Attempt
An Eyewitness Account from the Oak Street Bridge
The second time I witnessed a suicide attempt was in Richmond, BC. There are numerous points to take away from this event, some of which are similar to the first event in Edmonton.
I was walking on the east side of the Oak Street Bridge from Vancouver to Richmond between 10 PM and 11 PM on a night in the current decade. When I was pretty close to the Richmond side, I noticed someone walking in the opposing direction.
He was carrying a chair.
At its best, it would have been a normal patio chair, white in color and cheap. The seat was still in place, but the backrest was missing. It looked more like a chair that someone would likely have discarded.
Seeing him with the chair was an awkward moment for me. Unlike the instance on the High Level Bridge, where the woman had put herself on the other side of the ledge and was clearly in danger, carrying a chair across a bridge could be viewed as entirely innocuous.
On the other hand, someone might have a chair on a bridge because they imagined that they would need to stand on it to get over the ledge as part of a suicide attempt involving jumping from the bridge. Yet, that someone may be planning to do that based only on their possession of a chair is a very difficult assumption to act on.
It was this difficult moment, where I felt a tension between someone having the god-given right to move a piece of furniture around in public and my belief that the same piece of furniture might have been a tool in a suicide plan, that made the Richmond 2020s event much different than the Edmonton 1990s event.
Confronting the Man and Assessing the Situation
I decided to confront the man. In doing so, I did not beat around the bush.
I immediately asked the Asian man on the Oak Street Bridge if he was about to commit suicide. He did not confirm that, but then I asked what the chair was for, noting that it was nothing more than a piece of garbage in its current state. He merely stated that it was his and that he wanted to be left alone. It is a free country, right?
If he was homeless, he didn't look like the sorriest homeless person I'd ever seen. He still looked fairly healthy, and his clothes were casual, but not patchy and dirty. I was homeless once for a few weeks without turning into a full-blown zombie, so maybe that's where he was as well.
He walked away, but I changed direction and followed him as he scolded me for not minding my business. I told him that I couldn't let him continue while believing that he might be about to commit suicide, and I shared my suspicion that the chair he had was meant to aid him in getting over the rail that guarded against falls and suicides. He continued to walk away, and no longer in my early 20s, a few moments later I realized that I would not be able to keep pace with him. But I am still six feet tall and over 250 pounds, so I just grabbed the chair, and we had a tug of war over it for a minute.
Neither of us would let go. I wondered if money might make a difference, so I offered him ten dollars to buy the chair. It was clearly worthless, so my thinking was that refusal to accept that money would mean it had different value to him.
In all events, if he needed it to get over the ledge, then he would not have it. I said he could take the money and sit in a restaurant for a short time to think things over. If he was planning to commit suicide, I said, the bridge would be there in the morning. I was trying to create a delay. I did plan to call the police, but my hands were preoccupied in the tug of war.
I had to up my price to $15. He agreed, I got my wallet out, and didn't have change for a $20 bill, so I bought that godforsaken chair from him for that price.
Calling Police and the Question of Jurisdiction
He continued to walk toward Vancouver, and I went toward Richmond. The time was around 10:50pm and I had somewhere I needed to be.
I called the police and tried to explain why I felt there was a suicidal man on the Oak Street Bridge. I struggled with credibility as I knew that carrying a chair on a bridge wasn't like standing on the other side of the bridge's rail, and I feared bumping into a police officer who would tell me not to waste their time. But the officer recognized that it was an odd scenario, and he dispatched the police cruisers.
Of course, time is of the essence concerning suicide intervention. So, I think there is a point to be made here regarding efficiency.
The Oak Street Bridge connects two cities, unlike a bridge that remains within a single municipality, such as the High Level Bridge. If I am not mistaken, this contributed to an administrative delay during the 9-1-1 call because I first had to explain which city I was closer to, and I was then transferred by telephone from Vancouver police to Richmond police. Meanwhile, I watched the man, now only a small blip in the distance, approach the crest of the bridge.
If my inference was correct -- that the bridge's division between two municipalities had created an additional administrative step -- I wonder whether it might be wise to designate a specific point on the bridge with a sign as the Vancouver side and another as the Richmond side, and to also do the same for other bridges that cross municipal boundaries. It could potentially shave precious moments off a conversation that, in circumstances like these, may have life-and-death consequences. For locals, the exact point may become second nature.
In the poorly lit conditions, I wondered whether he would find a way to get over the ledge without the chair. This certainly would not be impossible, and by securing the chair, I may have only interfered with his plan, not prevented the outcome.
I was still holding the chair—my precious $20 piece of garbage. By my own standards, that meant I now looked like someone who might be planning to jump off a bridge. I also knew that the police were on their way.
Suicide Clues? Aimless Walking and Changing Direction
Then, with a final look back toward Vancouver, I saw that the man who walked toward that city had turned around and started walking back toward Richmond. Based on this, I considered that his route was aimless. If he was really going from Richmond to Vancouver, then the turnaround contradicted that. It dawned on me that he never intended to cross the bridge from the moment that I first saw him. I was then more confident in my original guess that he was suicidal, even if this remained unverifiable.
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| AI-generated image. Dramatization. In real time, I was much further away. Furthermore, the setting is not a convincing replica of the true area. |
Throughout the episode, I was caught between two opposing realities: I could not verify that the man was actually suicidal, yet I felt compelled to act on the possibility that he was. Being unable to establish the truth did not eliminate the responsibility I felt to respond to what I was seeing. But it did create the possibility that I would have to explain why I bothered someone.
As for other personal trauma, I did wonder if he might attack me as I struggled with him for the chair.
When the police later confirmed that my suspicion had been correct, that created a different kind of conundrum. There was naturally a sense of vindication in knowing that I had interpreted the situation correctly, but that feeling was difficult to embrace because being right meant that another person had actually been attempting suicide.
Like in the Edmonton 1990s event, the moment of police converging caused a panic. The last I saw was the man fleeing the scene. It was later that the police would call me and confirm that it was a suicide attempt.
Takeaways and Lessons After Witnessing Two Suicide Attempts
- Someone carrying a chair across a bridge warrants suspicion;
- Bridges between cities include an extra step that increases response time, as the person receiving the call has to figure out, I think, whose jurisdiction the event is occurring in at a point in a region where you are on the cusp of two jurisdictions;
- Aimless walking (ie., the man turning around) is a clue in situations where you are dealing with trying to figure out if someone might be suicidal;
- How the police can respond to a suicide scene without causing panic seems to be a dilemma -- the person on scene must be ready to act;
- If my instincts had been entirely wrong in the second case, then what happens to me for playing tug of war with another person's possessions and then insisting that he must sell it to me?
- My physical size (6', 255 pounds) was part of the scene, as I don't feel threatened as easily as smaller people might in a dodgy area late at night; I think people of lesser stature might be less inclined to intervene.
How Suicide Prevention Can Prevent Missing-Person Cases
If the man committed suicide and did not have ID in his pocket, then he probably would have been, at least, a short-term John Doe if he was found. Whether he would have also generated a corresponding missing persons investigation is complicated: it would depend on whether someone realized he was missing and initiated the process. When some people go missing, sometimes no one ever files anything, while others file decades later. If he selected a jumping point over the Fraser River, then there's no telling how long he would be missing for, as rivers are notorious for hiding people for decades and decades.
In conclusion, I think suicide prevention can help solve missing-persons cases, although not directly. By preventing some people from becoming missing in the first place, suicide prevention reduces the overall number of missing-persons cases and allows investigators to devote greater attention to the cases that already exist, rather than dividing their resources across an even larger caseload. This has to do with concentration of effort. Reducing the cases can only have positive implications for the investigation and resolution of the cases that remain.
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