San Diego Comic-Con is a yearly event where fans get to dress up and pretend to be superheroes, but this year a team of stuntmen really did come to the rescue of a person in need.
On Thursday, a team of
professionals from the appropriately named company Stunts 911 were in a
parking lot situated next to a condominium building in downtown San Diego. In a phone conversation with Yahoo! Movies on Saturday, stunt coordinator Gregg Sergeant
said they were on a scaffolding about 30 feet in the air prepping a
stunt for a party for the film "Kick-Ass 2" where they would light
someone on fire when they first saw a woman standing on the outside
railing of a balcony on the 14th floor in an apparent suicide attempt.
Crowds assembled on the ground, at
first believing it to be a promotional stunt for Comic-Con. But when it
was clear that she was genuinely in danger, the Los Angeles Times reports onlookers shouted out "Don't do it! Don't jump!"
Sergeant, along with fellow
stuntmen Scott Schecter and Amus Carver, dashed across the lot to the
building's security office. Finding it was locked, they scaled the fence
to get to the tower. They were met by security guards from the
building, and the men told them what floor they had spotted the woman
on.
Taking the elevator to the 14th
floor, they found the correct room with the door unlocked. He said they
could see her standing on the rim of the railing through the patio's
glass door. He said they were able to get out onto the patio without her
noticing, and then he grabbed her from behind and held her while the
other two got a safety harness secured around her. Then they dragged her
over the railing and back into the room. Sergeant told Yahoo! Movies,
"It seemed like she was very drunk. She was crying and hysterical."
The uninjured woman was taken to
UC San Diego Medical Center for evaluation. Sergeant, who has worked as a
stunt performer on big Hollywood productions like "Gangster Squad" and
the "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels, said they cut the rescue as
close as anything you'd see in a movie. He said, "There's no doubt in my
mind if we had come two seconds later, she would have been gone."
San Diego police officer Lt. Kevin Mayer told The San Diego Union-Tribune
that the stuntmen truly put themselves in harm's way when they
attempted their rescue. He said the woman had been drinking and was
distraught after a breakup. Police Mayer said, "They were the perfect
guys to be there at that time... It was very dangerous. I've seen
attempted suicides when someone grabs them and is pulled over."
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