By Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle
03.10.11
SAN FRANCISCO -- A 17-year-old boy on a field trip with his Sonoma County high school class leaped from the Golden Gate Bridge Thursday, but survived and was able to swim to shore with a surfer who went out to rescue him, authorities said.
The boy is a junior at Windsor High School whom officials did not identify because of his age. Some students said he might have leaped to impress his classmates, but for now the California Highway Patrol is investigating the matter as an attempted suicide, said CHP Officer Chris Rardin.
The boy jumped at 11:15 a.m. from the east sidewalk near the south tower, the CHP said. He was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he was expected to live.
Some witnesses said he broke his tailbone and damaged his lungs in the fall, but a Windsor Unified School District press release said he suffered no severe injuries beyond bruising and tenderness. Hospital officials said they cannot release specific information about the boy.
Surviving the fall was remarkable considering the spot the student leaped from is more than 200 feet off the water - and 99 percent of the estimated 1,500-pluspeople who have jumped from the bridge since it opened in 1937 died from the fall.
So far this year, seven people had jumped to their deaths from the bridge, officials estimate. Last year, the count was 32.
Golden Gate Bridge District spokeswoman Mary Currie said that the number of people attempting suicide off the span has grown from about 20 a year in the early 2000s to about 30 annually in the past few years.
"It could be from population growth, the economy, you name it - you just can't draw conclusions about why the numbers went up," Currie said.
The district has plans to install safety nets on the bridge, but the final design is not complete and the installation is a couple of years away at best, Currie said.
Rumors about Thursday's leap tore through the student body by conversation and social media, and the common thread was that it appeared the boy jumped of his own accord and that onlookers were upset by the experience.
"He did it to try to look cool," said one classmate, who did not want to be identified. "He said he'd jumped off bridges before." Another student who said he was on the scene tweeted that students tried to stop the boy before he leaped.
Rardin said the boy jumped as he was walking on the bridge with about 45 other students on a school field trip.
"He landed in the water, a surfer paddled out to him, and they both swam back to shore," Rardin said. "He was conscious when they came up at Fort Point.
"I've heard a bunch of things about how this happened, but we haven't come to a conclusion yet," he said. "I do know he's very lucky to be alive."
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