Moroccan Student’s Midnight Heroism Thwarts Bridge Suicide

The events took place on July 22nd, when Marouane saved the life of a man from Peru who had attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a 47-meter high bridge in Elche. For this heroic act, the young Moroccan was decorated last weekend by the local police during the feast of their patron saint, Saint Raphael. The student, who had arrived in the city only ten months ago, says he met a man at four o’clock in the morning on July 22nd, after he had left the house of a friend with whom he had played on the Play-Station. The man asked him for a lighter. "When I gave it to him, he started to cry and I don’t like to see a man cry," he recounts to El Pais.

The young Moroccan thought the man was drunk. But the man confided in him that he had attempted to jump off the bridge several times. The Peruvian claims he lost his entire family during the Covid-19 pandemic. Marouane asked him if he could accompany him to a mosque to talk to someone. On the way, the student tried to calm him down, despite his limited Spanish. Once at the mosque, Marouane asked two people to help him calm the man down. But they responded that it was late and it would be better to come back the next day. The young Moroccan then took leave of the Peruvian, giving him his phone number and making him promise to call him the next day.

Uneasy about the man’s attitude, Marouane decided to follow him at a distance. The Peruvian went into a bakery and bought a beer, which he drank on a bench near the Bimil·lenari bridge, opposite the Caritas headquarters in Elche. After a while, he got up and headed to the middle of the bridge, drank the last sip, threw the can, and "took the first step to try to jump," Marouane recounts. The young man ran, firmly grabbed him by the arms, and pulled him away from the railing. The man asked him, "What are you doing?" "Why do you care about my life?" Then he started to cry and repeatedly asked him, "Are you the Archangel Gabriel?"

Marouane could not call for help because his mobile phone was out of battery. He then asked the Peruvian to unlock his phone so he could dial 112, which he initially refused, before agreeing. Three minutes later, the local police, the national police, and an ambulance were on the scene. The man was finally taken to the hospital to receive appropriate care. Two days later, the Peruvian called him to thank him. "You are wonderful, my brother," he repeated to him several times. Marouane is proud to have saved this man’s life. "We are human, we don’t have a heart of stone. We must help those who are not doing well," says the computer science student at IES Severo Ochoa, who holds a tourist visa.