A call about a 10-year-old jumping off the bridge along the Wolf River between the city of Shawano and town of Richmond turned out to have a happy ending after it was discovered that an older man had jumped in and was just fine.
The Shawano Police Department received a call from dispatch at about 5:35 p.m. July 10 from a caller who had crossed the bridge at County Road MMM and said it looked like a 10-year-old child was jumping from the bridge, according to Chief Mike Musolff. The call brought out city police officers, along with the Shawano Area Fire Department, Shawano County Sheriff’s Department with its dive team and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Officials searched for almost three hours but did not find any body, according to Musolff. He said he received a message later through social media that the person who had jumped from the bridge was a 40-year-old man, and it was determined he was just fine after his dive.
Musolff said the agencies came together incredibly quickly, which would have worked in the favor of life if there had actually been a victim that had been hurt or killed.
“It says something that we were able to respond so quickly and take action,” he said.
Musolff noted that jumping from the bridge is illegal, but no action has been taken to cite or charge the man who jumped July 10.
“We discourage people from jumping off the bridge,” Musolff said. “It would have made things easier for us because people see different things. I don’t fault the person for calling it in. It’s great that they called it in because they didn’t know. It’s not a normal behavior to have somebody jump off a bridge.”
Musolff noted that, even though a lot of resources were brought in to investigate, it was fortunate that there were no deaths, injuries or arrests.
“It’s one of those things where we were like, ‘Oh, it turned out to be nothing,’” Musolff said.
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
