Paul Henry

Said the following about Karl Richardson:

“Karl Richardson works at Bradford Interchange and on an evening in November, Karl actions at work would lead to saving a man at the station from committing suicide. Karl's account of the incident is below;

Where do I start, I was working the gates at Bradford ,on the night in question (November 2013) it was a busy shift, and a passenger came up to me a bit panic stricken if i a™m honest with you, I asked if she was OK and she told me there was somebody on the car park bridge overlooking the sidings on platform 4,on that note I went up platform 4 and noticed a male squatting on the wall overlooking the tracks, I shouted unto him and also asked passengers to move back then used my phone to ring the station supervisor, to ring signal box and block platform 4 of as we had a potential suicide. this I started to talk to the male again asking him to think what he was doing and to talk to me and to try to calm this situation down, I asked the male would it be OK to talk to him and in broken English he replied yes, and then I said I will come up at this point there was a train already approaching the platform which i stopped ,talked to the driver then made my way up to the car park, when approaching the male I asked him to calm down and move away from the wall, he didn't so I said do you smoke he said yes then walked over to him to offer him a cigarette, then held one out for he reached for it then I pulled him with my left hand away from the edge, he fell to the ground and just sat there I leant over the wall to tell supervisor and driver all is well here open the platform open again and then I sat with the male who was in a state talked to him for about 20 minutes about his life and his family, learned he had young children like me and asked if he wanted to be a father to his family or dead or a paraplegic in a wheelchair or would he rather get some help. At that point the police arrived to take him away™

After the event the man returned to the station with who can be assumed to have been his wife and thanked Karl for saving his life. He had come to realise that with having 2 children he had more to live for than he had thought.

I think not only did Karl's quick thinking and actions save this gentleman's life taking the time to listen and talk to him also made his think about things in a different way for the future.“