A widow whose son committed himself by jumping from the Penobscot Narrows Bridge in 2013 stated that surviving families are re-traumatized every time someone else dies in the same manner, as happened just a few days ago.
Stephanie Cossette of Eddington expressed concern that when state officials decided last year to erect suicide prevention fencing on the bridge, delays in the installation could result in additional deaths.
Then, this past weekend, another person committed suicide by jumping off the bridge. Cossette, 62, said her 93-year-old mother informed her about it.
“She called me crying,” Cossette explained. “She heard about it before I did.”
The Maine Department of Transportation announced this summer that it was delaying the project, which had been approved by the Legislature in June 2023, to undertake studies to assess whether severe winds could damage the proposed barrier or potentially the bridge. Those tests would push the project back to early 2025, possibly even later if the testing revealed that the proposed fence design needed to be revised, according to state officials.
Maine DOT spokesperson Paul Merrill said in a brief statement Monday that the department is still waiting for the wind testing lab’s final report to determine the impact of the fence on the bridge structure. He did not make any more comment.
Cossette said she was disappointed that the state had not yet constructed the fencing, but she is now feeling more “ticked off” than upset.
“This is exactly what I’ve been worried about,” Cossette added. “I’m afraid it’s never going to get done, and it will be one excuse after another.”
She stated that when someone else dies by jumping off the bridge, it is not only their family who suffers. Friends and family of past jumpers are re-traumatized, she added, and first responders who are dispatched to look for and maybe collect their remains risk compromising their mental health.
Cossette stated that, despite detractors’ claims that the $2 million project will not save lives and that people who want to commit suicide will simply do so elsewhere, data reveals that this is not the case.
According to studies, the desire to commit suicide is impulsive, and persons who are unable to obtain the means to end their lives frequently change their minds and do not attempt again. Other studies show that persons who attempted suicide by leaping from enormous heights but lived claimed they regretted their decision as soon as they started to fall.
“My son was very impulsive,” Cossette explained.
Had there been a fence on the bridge in 2013, her son might have turned back, giving Cossette and her family more time to get him aid.
“We could have done something more,” she remarked.
Since the Penobscot Narrows Bridge was constructed in 2006, over a dozen persons are reported to have committed suicide by jumping from it, although others perished earlier by jumping from the Waldo-Hancock Bridge. According to suicide prevention campaigners, no suicides have occurred at Augusta’s Memorial Bridge over the Kennebec River since fencing was placed there in 1983.
In 2015, the state installed suicide hotline phones at either end of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, in the municipalities of Verona Island and Prospect, however, the phones were often reported to be inoperable. Even when the phones were functioning, mental health activists claimed they were ineffective.
Legislators opposed installing preventative fencing on the bridge in 2014 and again in 2017, citing the high expense.