Suicide on the front line: 'A woman died and you just want a smoke'

Suicide can take a toll on the people on the frontline who have to attend incidents. Photo / 123RF

Horrors facing police, ambulance officers and others attending incidents leave lasting mark, writes Sieska Verdonk.

Warning: Some readers may find this article distressing.

The train driver verbally abused by passengers angry they could not get off for a cigarette after someone had committed suicide on the tracks.

The firefighter doing CPR on a girl who had taken her own life - and realising he knew her.

The ambulance officer too scared of the dark to fix a leak after finding a friend dead under his house.

The officer who had to tell a husband and three girls their mother had committed suicide on Father's Day.

Suicides are at their highest rate on record (579 people took their own lives in the year to June) and last year police received 14,992 attempted suicide calls.

It's not just families and friends of suicide victims who are affected, it can take a toll on the people on the frontline who have to attend incidents.

These are some of their stories.

'Hollywood could not have replicated what I saw'

It's a cold morning and Brendon Judd is woken at his Auckland home by a phone call at 5am. North of the city, a man has taken his own life.

Judd is the linehaul operations manager for a rail company. On the other end of the phone is the control manager, who explains someone had been hit en route to Whangarei.

It's Judd's job to attend.

He arrives at 6.30am.

"All I was thinking was how the heck is this person going to be identified? Hollywood could not have replicated what I saw."

He heads back to Auckland to write a report in the office. The sun is rising, his phone is silent.

"Nobody asked me all day if I was okay."

Brendon Judd was an operations manager for Kiwirail and tasked with attending fatalities involving trains. Photo / Sieska Verdonk

Judd is now an operation standards manager for another rail company.

As he walks through an Auckland train station, he addresses almost every staff member by name, from ticket collectors to locomotive engineers.

"I try and always treat people like it's the last time I'll ever see them. I know what it's like to lose someone and wish your last conversation was different."

Early in his rail career, Judd experienced suicide in his own family when his younger sister Karen took her life.

"I was filling up the locomotive with fuel when the boss called me into his office. In my head, I was thinking, 'What have I done?' But it was my mother on the phone, she said, 'Brendon, it's your sister.' The bottom dropped out of my world that day."

Judd attends incidents where a driver has hit someone - in accidents and attempted suicides - to help them deal with what's in front of them.

"I do it to support my colleagues, and with the support of my current company as well, I try and make sure no one is left unspoken to."

Judd told of the callousness of some passengers who were faced with a suicide on the tracks in central Auckland last year after being told that there would be a small wait.

"They were more worried about smoking cigarettes and getting to work. They were verbally abusing the staff on board the train too. One guy just wanted a cigarette and threatened to light it in the train. I thought, 'Where is your humanity? A young woman has just died here and all you care about is just having a cigarette?"'

Some of the drivers take it upon themselves to check on the person they have hit. In one case, friends of a man who had committed suicide became angry at the driver and attacked him.

"The driver had to run for his life to get away from them. So not only did the driver have the trauma of the accident, but then he went back to try to do the right thing of checking if the person was still alive and for his troubles he got attacked.

"Probably the most heartbreaking example is Ian [not his real name] ... he went back at a particular suicide to check if the person was alive, and it's worth mentioning the victim involved was dared to put himself in harm's way by other people, and the victim passed away.

"Ian went back and held the person's hand. He didn't feel thathe should have been alone as he died."

'I didn't recognise her until someone told me who I was doing CPR on'

Former firefighter Ritchie Cooper, far left. Photo / Supplied

Ritchie Cooper is a former firefighter who served more than 30 years in central Auckland, Henderson and Piha.

"I went to quite a few suicides and attempted suicides, probably 50/50. About 15 to 20 in total ... I got used to seeing dead people.

"But one that stuck with me was a young girl I knew who committed suicide. I didn't recognise her until someone told me who I was doing CPR on. That was the worst one. I had to tell her father, and he lived a couple of doors along from me. He was out having dinner at a restaurant and I had to ring him.

"Another one that stuck out was a suicide at an Auckland train station. The guy was still alive when we got to him but died on the way to the hospital."

Getting help if you're on the frontline used to be hard, Cooper said.

"Guys would get embarrassed if they asked for counselling. It came over the radio in the truck on the way back from a job. No one wanted to put his or her hand up. There was no counselling even available until recent years. It's pretty piss poor. There are guys that left because of it."

For former police officer Mike Tolhurst, the suicide of a teenager in 1982 stuck with him. Photo / Sieska Verdonk

For former police officer Mike Tolhurst, the suicide of a teenager in 1982 has stuck with him. "I wrote a song about it at the time as it was so alarming that a 16-year-old could think that all hope had been lost. It's stuck with me forever.

"I've been to more than I can remember, but I think you always remember death. However, it was just part of the job. It was something that we got trained to deal with, although we weren't trained to deal with preventing suicides, just how to clean up.

"My understanding is that now there is counselling available with the police after a death but I suspect hardly anyone takes it."

He said there were a few officers who took their own lives during his nine years in the force.

"I suspect they were from mental health issues over long periods of time."

'I was giving CPR to a dead body with rigor mortis'

A former police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told of wrestling a man who was trying to commit suicide.

"I accidentally cut myself on the handcuffs that I was trying to put on him.

"Next thing I noticed something in his sleeve was moving. I shook out a big black rat which the guy told me was his pet, and he only fed it human blood. He was a Satanist or something.

"Somehow his blood got smeared across my cut in the scramble, and next thing I know I'm waiting half a year getting checked every couple of months to make sure I haven't got some rat-borne or other disease. Caused me a bit of anxiety at the time."

While working in Hamilton, he found a man who had been dead for some time from suicide.

"My partner moved his feet or something and the dead guy coughed, so I hear this cough and think, right, he's alive. So I start giving him mouth-to-mouth till the ambulance showed up and they shortly after told me, no, that blue-green tinge in his skin means he has rigor mortis. So there I was giving CPR to a dead body with rigor mortis.

"It's like putting water into a glass, at some point it's going to spill over. You deal with four, five, six suicides but after that, it's a game of which one will push you over the edge."

Former police negotiator Lance Burdett was faced with suicide in his job, and suffered his own mental health problems. Photo / Sieska Verdonk

Lance Burdett has been on both sides of the fence. He was a top policeman, ran 111 call centres and he negotiated with gunmen, including Jan Molenaar during the Napier siege. Then he had a breakdown.

"Work scratches away at you, and then what will take you down is something in your personal life, and for me it was the death of my mother and I just ignored it, and tried to not worry about grieving. Then one day out of the blue something will hit you and really take you down."

He has strong views on what kids should be taught at school.

"We have to teach children about disappointment, around emotions, and about the basics of money.

"What I do know is that from personal experience, and dealing with hundreds of people now, is that it is possible to overcome this. It is going to take some work though."

Burdett now runs a company teaching stress management.

'I'm a grown man but I had trouble going to bed without the lights on'

Robbie Harwood began his career in 1988 driving ambulances. Photo / Sieska Verdonk

Robbie Harwood is a St John area chaplain in Whangamata. He began his career in 1988 driving ambulances.

One incident left a lasting impact on him.

"A good friend of mine back in the early 90s committed suicide. He was a builder, loved surfing and was only 23. One night his mum phoned me from Hamilton and said she was worried about him, so I drove to his house and found him dead under the house.

"As an ambulance driver I was used to seeing and dealing with dead people, but it was just the actual horror, that initial fright. It filled me with fear. I'm a grown man but I had trouble going to bed without the lights on.

"I went to fix a leak under a house in Waihi and I couldn't go under it. It had put this fear, this horror into me. I kind of beat myself up for a while because he was a good friend of mine and here he's killed himself. Why didn't I see a sign? Why didn't I do something?

"I would say in the last 20 years that there have been more suicides in Whangamata than there have been road deaths. I could say that confidently."

A current serving ambulance officer in the lower North Island spoke anonymously.

"One of the suicides that sticks out in my mind is a wife - a mother, she was mid-40s with a beautiful family and house," the man said.

"She got up early in the morning on Father's Day and committed suicide. She had three lovely young daughters between 10 and 15 years old.

"That was one of the hardest jobs I've ever had to do, sitting there for hours trying to comfort those girls, not knowing what or how much to tell them. Meanwhile, they were going through these emotional cycles, crying then totally numb, then they got angry because no one would tell them what was going on.

"You hang on to these stories. When you haven't been exposed to suicides at all, you think it will never happen to anyone I know. And then you go out on the ambulance and see it happening to regular families and it's a bit of a shock."

Suicides in NZ

579 to June 2016
14,992 attempted suicide calls

• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)
• Youthline: 0800 376 633
• Kidsline: 0800 543 754 (available 24/7)
• Whatsup: 0800 942 8787 (1pm to 11pm)
• Depression helpline: 0800 111 757 (available 24/7)
• Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155
• Samaritans 0800 726 666
• If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.