By Anthony F. Irwin
The sergeant steeled himself as he raced to the storage facility on West Commonwealth, where a man was threatening to kill himself.
“I had an idea what I was about to see so I prepared myself with gloves and anything I might need before I arrived on the scene,” recalled Sgt. Steve Williams, a 24-year Fullerton Police veteran, of an April incident that earned him a recent life-saving medal.
The man’s mother pointed him to the 15-foot-deep locker, and said her son had tried to kill himself once before. The locker was so stacked with clutter Williams could barely get inside.
The man was on the floor, gripping a scalpel and slicing his wrists. “I want to die,” he said.
Williams screamed for him to stop, but the man ignored him.
“Normally we try to communicate as much as possible but in this case, it was too late to talk,” he said.
Recognizing the dangerous nature of the situation – and the little time he had to act, Williams deployed his Taser. The man’s scalpel dropped.
“After we use the Taser, the situation can go one of two ways: the subject can get aggressive because of the pain or they can dislike the pain so much they become compliant,” Williams said. “ In this case, he complied.”
Williams cleared a path to get to the man, applied pressure to the wounds and dragged him out of the storeroom. He kept pressure on the wounds until paramedics arrived to take the man to the hospital.
Without Sgt. Williams’ successful intervention, the man would have successfully committed suicide, doctors and paramedics said.
For his effort, Williams was honored last month with the Fullerton Police Department’s Life Saving medal.
“It’s great to be recognized, but ask any of my fellow officers and they’d tell you, that’s not why I become a cop,” he said. “Awards are great, but our motivation is serving the community.”
