Delicious. (Picture: Getty Images)

Is there a problem that the pizza cannot solve?

When a man in San Jose, California, threatened to throw himself from an overpass and onto a motorway, police were forced to look for help to prevent a tragedy.

Over a five-hour period, California Highway Patrol officers had exhausted every trick in the book to try to stop the man taking his life, including sending officers to speak to him face-to-face and having trained negotiators attempt to talk him down through a tannoy system.

It was then that they called on the mighty pizza. Using the Northrup Grumman Remotec Andros F6A bomb disposal robot, police transported the doughy dish to the man and waited.




MORE: Domino’s chicken tikka pizza could solve your takeaway dilemma

MORE: This single slice pizza box is the pizza box of the future

‘[Because] delivering food is a way of encouraging someone to do something we want them to do, we sent pizza with [the] phone,’ said police sergeant Chris Sciba.

‘We [instructed the subject] that if he wanted the pizza released, to pick up the phone.

‘The robot was holding the pizza, it released the pizza once the subject picked up [the] phone to talk to negotiators.’

Less than an hour after the pizza delivery, the man voluntarily approached officers and was taken into custody.