This is the moment a newspaper photographer trying
to take a snap of heavy fog that had blanketed a bridge captured a couple’s
suicide leapThe photographer had been standing on a viewing platform ready to
take a snap of the fog shrouded bridge across the Wuhan Yangtze River in Wuhan,
at Hubei province in central China.
He said: ‘The mist was so
thick on the bridge so large that it looked as if the bridge was standing on and
disappeared into air. Like a bridge into nothingness.
Police identified the man from some of the possessions he left
at the top and said he was a 20-year-old migrant worker named as Liu Han
‘To be honest I didn’t even see the first person jump because I was
concentrating so much on the camera settings and I didn’t realise at first that
I had snapped the man jumping to his death
‘It was only then after snapping the photograph that I heard someone shout
that somebody had jumped. I heard him hit the water below and then seconds later
a woman climbed onto the bridge and jumped as well.
‘I was totally paralysed – there was no way I could get anywhere near her, I
still had my hand on the camera and I tensed and shot off another few frames
entirely by accident – but ended up photographing the woman as well.’
Police identified the man from some of the possessions he left
at the top and said he was a 20-year-old migrant worker named as Liu Han, and
believed that the girl who has not yet been identified was his lover.
It is not known why the pair had made a pact to throw themselves to their
deaths.
The boy’s uncle contacted by telephone said that he knew the young man was
struggling to make a living and he can only assume that it was money that was
the problem – as without an income it would have been difficult for him to
settle down with the young woman.
Police who searched the river after seeing the
photographic evidence that the pair jumped failed to find either of the bodies
and after dark the search was called off.
A police spokesman added: ‘That is a 40 metre drop – it is
extremely unlikely that either of them are still alive.’
Suicide rates among young people are high in China, where a person tries to
kill themselves every two minutes, the government says.
According to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, China’s suicide
rate is 22.23 people out of every 100,000.
About 287,000 people kill themselves in the country of 1.3 billion every
year, while about two million try to commit suicide annually.
The disease control centre said suicide is the biggest killer among Chinese
aged 15 to 34.
The photographer had been standing on a viewing platform ready to take a snap
of the fog shrouded bridge
Extreme pressure to perform well at school and to
find employment were the main reasons behind the high rate of suicide among
China’s youths, media said.
The suicide rate in rural areas is three times higher than in urban centres
and accounts for 75 per cent of China’s suicide total, it said.
According to the Guangzhou Daily, the number of suicides in China has risen
sharply during the reform and open period, when the nation’s economy has boomed
and tall buildings and structures like buildings have been built.
Many spots such as the Wuhan Yangtze bridge have been dubbed a ‘lovers’ leap’
after the number of couple who have committed suicide there.
In 2009, the British medical journal The Lancet identified Lithuania,
Finland, Latvia, Hungary, China, Japan and Kazakhstan as all having
exceptionally high rates of suicide, 20 per 100,000 people or higher.
Couple In Love Jump Off Bridge To Commit Suicide