Police Rescue Girl On Roof

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31633, 20 March 1968, Page 1

Police Rescue Girl On Roof

Police yesterday dragged to safety a 16-year-old girl after she had threatened to jump from a ledge around the top of the Christchurch Working Men’s Club in Oxford Terrace.

The girt was being interviewed by a woman officer of the Child Welfare Division in a third-floor office of the division’s Gloucester Street premises.

She broke away and ran down a fire escape to the first-floor level before clambering over the roofs of adjoining shops till she gained the roof of the Working Men’s Club.

She climbed over a 3ft parapet surrounding the flat roof on to a narrow ledge near the north-western corner of the building where she lodged herself between a vent pipe and the wall. Three officers of the Child Welfare Division, Messrs J. De Bruin, D. Seller, and J. Smith climbed on to the roof but did not touch her.

Soon after 12.30 p.m., the police, fire brigade and ambulance were called and a crowd of about 200 gathered. Sergeant R. G. Gargett, the police officer in charge, with Constable G. Gallagher, went on to the roof through a manhole.

Firemen draped tarpaulins over a corrugated iron and barbed wire fence 30ft below where the girl was standing on the ledge and held a canvas sheet for her to jump into.

In the meantime the girl smoked a cigarette. Sergeant M. Brown arrived with a friend of the girl and he was taken on to the roof to talk with her.

While talking to the girl, Sergeant Gargeitt grabbed her right arm and Constable Gallagher grabbed her left arm. Sergeant M. Brown jumped over the parapet on to the ledge and, holding on with one hand, managed to grab the girl round the lower part of the body. The three men lifted and dragged her to the safety of the roof. She was taken, struggling violently, down a ladder on to a first-floor balcony.

The rescue was completed by 1.30 p.m.