WESTFIELD – Carl Faiella doesn’t want to be called a hero even though he helped save the life of a young man who almost jumped off of Cowles Bridge last week.
At around 11:30 a.m. on December 3, police received numerous calls reporting that there was a man on the river side of the railing on the bridge that connects South Maple Street and Southwick Road, according to police logs.
An unidentified man was on the other side (river side) of the railing with the victim struggling to keep him on top of the PVC pipe, Westfield Police Capt. Michael McCabe said.
Because of Faiella, other bystanders and police officers, the 23-year-old victim was transported to Baystate Noble Hospital in stable condition by 11:45 a.m.
McCabe went on a quest to locate him.
“We want him to contact the station so that we can commend him for his heroic actions,” said McCabe.
Once McCabe located Faiella, the good Samaritan did not want any praise or recognition because he was simply doing what he thought anyone should have done.
Faiella, of Southampton, posted an elegant and profound post on Facebook about what happened on the bridge that day.
He has allowed The Westfield News to share his words with our readers.
His post, dated December 6, is entitled, “I Love Everybody Because Everybody Needs Love.”
The rest of this article contains Faiella’s words, with only slight editing (indicated by an ellipsis) to slightly condense his account:
“I see two unattended black bags on the sidewalk as I’m driving over the Cowles Bridge in Westfield and I think, Am I supposed to report this? . . .
“So, the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino notwithstanding, I knew that this was unlikely to be the sign of a newly activated sleeper cell—Crane Pond has not emerged as a strategic concern of the Islamic State—but that I should probably pull over and report it.
“A woman in a car behind me had already pulled over to check them out herself as I was making a U-turn at the street at the end of the bridge. From this vantage point I could see the other side of the railing, below sidewalk level not readily visible to people on the bridge. That was the first time I saw the guy.
“He was wearing a red sweatshirt. It looked like he’d made a decision to jump and was either gathering the courage or re-thinking the impulse.
“When I climbed over the railing to get down to where he was, there were already a dozen people responding in various ways. I just wanted to keep him from jumping or falling and the best way to do that was to get as close to him as possible and hang on to him.
“By now there were people on either side of him on the other side of the railing. One man had a very tight grip on his right arm, another person had a good grip on his left, and I was just keeping my right arm around his waist, pressing into his lower back, trying to keep his center of gravity close to the bridge.
“Even if he wasn’t a big guy, there was no way I was going to be able to lift him over my head, no matter how many people were ready to help. Finally, the folks on top of the bridge were able to get a good grip on his arms and upper body, I pulled his sweatshirt up, put two fingers through the belt loop on the back of his jeans and we all managed to maneuver him up and over.
“I can tell this story in a lot of ways, and I’m sure I will over the years. I can say that the bridge is not very high. I can say that I was just trying to go get lunch. I can say that I have felt despair and I have trouble ignoring it. All these things are true. But I really don’t want to take such a difficult moment in someone else’s life and turn it into an opportunity for self-congratulation. If what I did is heroism, haven’t we set the bar a little low? What about the emergency services, fire department and police who responded? Did this even count as a particularly notable experience for any one of these guys?
But let me tell it like this:
“I stopped. Other people stopped. Women and men stopped. I was looking back up at my neighbors holding onto this distraught kid. I saw the black guy with a white beard. I saw a faded blue military tattoo on the forearm of another guy. Some of us, myself included, were saying useless stuff, platitudes—I’ve been there, too, man, We’re here for you, We care—even after the uniforms had arrived. But it was the unshaven kid in his twenties in a baseball cap, looked like he’d just left a nearby worksite, he was the only one who had the presence of mind to kneel down, put his face close to the railing and ask the other kid his name. Looked in his eyes, asked him how old he was.
“The reason I didn’t initially want to come forward was because I knew people would want to make what happened conform to the clichés and canned stories about Christmas miracles and guardian angels. And that’s all utter nonsense. I knew from the get-go that I wasn’t going to just tuck the man under my arm and deposit him back on the sidewalk myself. I just did what I could and waited, relying on the certainty that other people would come to help, too.
“Americans have become pretty timid. And we’ve got an obsessive desire to assign credit and blame for every turn of events. It was happenstance. What I did was far from heroic. Let’s stop reinforcing the belief that there’s something special about taking responsibility for our actions and acting with common decency. It lets everybody off the hook. I expect a bit more from myself. I hope that I can continue to expect it from you, too.
“I’m proud that I was part of the group of people who helped this guy. And my heart breaks for him because I have been there, too, and I hope that we will always make ourselves available when we can and that we do still care.”–Carl Faiella.
Staff Writer Christine Charnosky can be reached at [email protected]
