A police officer was sent “thank you” flowers from a suicidal man whose life she saved in the early hours of Saturday morning. She has since been hailed a local hero by people on social media.
PC Millyard, from Warrington Police, was on duty in the early hours of Saturday morning when she received a concern for safety report of a man sat on a local bridge.
Police managed to negotiate the man down from the bridge and he was taken to Warrington Hospital, a spokesperson for Cheshire Constabulary confirmed to HuffPost UK.
On Sunday, PC Millyard was praised by Warrington Police’s Twitter account for being the one to talk the man down from the bridge. She also received a small bouquet of flowers from the man she’d helped save, which had been delivered by him in person to the police station.
A photo was shared on Twitter of PC Millyard smiling and holding the flowers. The tweet has received more than 74,000 favourites and thousands of comments (and counting).
The officer’s act was branded “wonderful” by author and mental health advocate Matt Haig. Meanwhile Twitter user @serindea commented: “What a lovely way to say ‘because of you I woke up today’.”
Hundreds of others took the opportunity to praise the officer for her work.
When asked how they help people struggling with mental health, Warrington Police explained that staff have some mental health first aid training and they also have a ‘Street Triage’, where a mental health nurse, paramedic and police officer will respond to 999 calls together. This is for incidents where it’s believed people need immediate mental health support.