Richard Calderone grabbed onto the teen who was sitting on the railing of the Founders Bridge, ready to jump into the Connecticut River.
“He was sitting on the railing, with the legs hanging over, holding onto the light pole,” the retired Hartford police sergeant recalled Friday. “One slip and you wouldn’t survive.”
Calderone grabbed onto him from behind and held him for about five minutes until help arrived, unable to take him all the way to the ground.
It happened about 6 p.m. Wednesday, when he was working a riverside event. In addition to being a tutor in his hometown of Manchester, Calderone is a part-time park ranger in Hartford.
“All we did, the two of us, is cry,” he said, choking up, in a TikTok video he recorded about his experience.
Calderone, 60, saw a lot in his 21 years as a city cop. But he never experienced anything like this, he said in a telephone interview.
“A woman came up to me and said, ‘Somebody’s jumping,’” he said. He thought, ‘Eh, it’s nothing,’” and even started to record a video as he walked toward the bridge.
But when he approached the teenager, he realized it was something.
“I saw him and I thought, this is real,” he said, and he called it in on his two-way radio.
Calderone said he thought about having a conversation with the teen, but he opted to grab him from behind. It turned out to be a good decision, in part because the teenager has disabilities that prevent him from hearing and speaking.
He held onto the teen until help arrived.
“The two of us, for five minutes, we were crying together,” he said. “He was just distraught.”
Then, a man and an 18-year-old food worker who were at the event pulled the two to the ground, the man grabbing the teen from around the waist and the worker breaking his grip on the pole. The ex-cop and the teen didn’t let go of each other.
“And even after we were on the ground, I kept holding him,” Calderone said. “I felt this young man’s pain.”
He appreciated the efforts of the 18-year-old and the man — who turned out to be Luiz Casanova, chief of the Connecticut State Capitol Police.
“They pulled us to safety,” Calderone said. “I can’t thank those two enough.”
Sgt. Greg Wimble of the Capitol Police said his chief isn’t taking any credit.
“In this instance here, he’s really touting the efforts of the former Hartford sergeant, who really went above and beyond what anyone would expect,” Wimble said.
Said Casanova, “[Calderone’s] truly the hero here. He acted quickly. His police instincts kicked in. He, hopefully, changed the trajectory of this kid’s life.”
Calderone, who has been at scenes of suicides, homicides and once was knocked out by a drunken concert-goer, was a wreck afterward.
“This really overwhelmed me,” he said. “Yesterday, I had to call out sick. I was emotionally and physically sick.”
He realizes the experience could have had a much different ending, and is relieved.
“It worked out well,” he said.
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