ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY

Female Police Officer Jumps Off Highway Overpass To Save Boy’s Life

CBS New York
August 6, 2018

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- A New York police officer is being praised for her remarkable leap off a highway overpass in order to save a teen who had jumped moments before.

Hastings-on-Hudson Police Officer Jessie Ferreira Cavallo was reportedly on her way to work on Aug. 3, when she spotted a teenage boy climbing and jumping over a guardrail on the concrete overpass. “Everything happened so fast and I think my adrenaline was pumping so high,” Cavallo said, via WLTX. “He just climbed up and jumped off.”

Seeing the boy laying motionless on the ground below, the officer parked her car along the Saw Mill River Parkway, grabbed as many medical supplies as she had in her trunk and jumped to the rescue.

“I wasn’t thinking too much,” Cavallo explained. “I just knew, when I looked down and saw him… he looked dead. I couldn’t see anything other than blood. I thought to myself, ‘He needs help. I need to help him.'” The Westchester County officer didn’t realize she leaped nearly 30 feet to save the boy.

Cavallo, and another woman in a military uniform who stopped to help, were able to get a neck brace and splint on the teen until an ambulance could arrive. First responders transported the boy to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, however his condition was not known as of Aug. 5.

The heroic police officer says she didn’t realize what she had done until the following day. “That’s when it hit me. I didn’t realize how high it was. It seemed doable. It didn’t seem that high. I thought I jumped over a brick wall, or a cement barrier. It was so fast. It was more like tunnel vision. I saw the boy and I needed to get to him. I didn’t see anything else.”