When Kimberley Harrison and team got a call on the job that day in late April, it wasn’t the usual kind of appeal for help.
It wasn’t a fire spreading through dry trees and shrubs in parts of St Ann or a house fire caused by some carelessness or accident.
Indeed, it wasn’t a fire at all. Kimberly Harrison is a fire fighter, with nearly ten years in the service.
It was about 1:22 in the afternoon, she remembers, when the call came in to the St Ann’s Bay station, where she is a corporal that a young woman was in an almond tree, close to the St Ann’s Bay Examination Depot and the woman was threatening to jump.
It was the first such call she had to respond to. But out she went as a member of the team with five others, under the command of assistant superintendent Everett Williams. The location where the woman was threatening suicide, next to the sea in St Ann’s Bay, was not far away, less than half a mile in fact, from the station.
The fire brigade team got there within minutes and a crowd had gathered. The brigade team was told the woman had been in the tree for hours and no one had been able to coax her down.
“She was up about 15 (to) 20 feet” Ms Harrison told the North Coast Times.
By this time, they had learnt that the woman had claimed she had been cheated on by the love of her life and that she couldn’t take it anymore and had been saying she was going to end her life. She was going to jump.
BOYFRIEND TOO
Other government employees had come to the scene too, including police personnel and mental health officers from the health department. Then there were the curious bystanders, among who was the young woman’s boyfriend. According to some of the bystanders, the man had been denying the claims that he had been unfaithful to the woman in the tree who was claiming his infidelity had driven her to contemplate this desperate act.
A fire sergeant had gone up on the ladder of the fire unit and the young woman had chased him away, telling him to leave her alone or she would jump. He retreated.
Corporal Harrison had asked in the crowd for the young woman’s name and was told. We’ll call her Sasha, to protect her.
“Sasha, yuh nuh hungry?” Cpl Harrison called out. Sasha nodded her head in response. Cpl Harrison asked the woman’s boyfriend to go get a bottle of water for her. But then Sasha said she wanted nothing.
Then she asked Sasha how come she had got up into the tree.
WRITING HER STORY
Sasha asked for paper to write what had happened to her.
Paper was provided and the corporal asked and was allowed by her team leader to go up the ladder. She gave Sasha the paper and pen and she wrote her sad story.
Upon the ladder, Cpl Harrison was dressed in her uniform, a pair of pants and the blue regulation ‘T’ shirt. She could see that the young woman was wearing a short dress and when she was closer she could see that although the woman was crying no tears were coming from her eyes.
Cpl Harrison was still on the ladder, the sergeant a little further down. Sasha handed her the story. She wrote that she had been abused by relatives over the years and was relieved when she met a young man who treated her well and she thought she found her true love. But he had started to accuse her of being unfaithful to him, which she swore she was not and he started keeping other women. He had taken one into their home. She felt disrespected and abused all over again and realized, according to her that no one liked her so she was going to kill herself.
By this time Cpl Harrison could see that the situation appeared bad for the woman in the tree as countless ants were running over her leg and arms and she didn’t even seem to notice.
LIFE’S POSSIBILITIES
Then Cpl Harrison said she realized the young woman wanted to talk and so she asked the male sergeant to go back to the ground. Sgt Harrison started to counsel her about her value and about who she was.
Sasha told her she had passed eight subjects in the CXC and wanted to become a nurse but that she didn’t have the resources.
Then Cpl Harrison began to offer a picture of life’s possibilities. She told Sasha that the Justice Ministry was recruiting for correctional officers right now that she was qualified and that she (Harrison) could get her the application form right now and help her fill it out. “You could come by the station with me and fill it out,” she offered.
Sasha shrugged her shoulder.
Shortly after, she decided to come down with the corporal who guided her about how to get on the ladder and come down walking back ways. She came down front ways instead and the corporal brought her to ground.
They walked together on the beach right there outside the Island Traffic Authority office and the restaurant before, under instruction from a mental health nurse, Sasha was taken away by the police to consult with mental health staff.
Attempts to find out what has happened to Sasha yielded very little information though she has been seen going about her business in St Ann.
