St. Paul police officers and firefighters pulled a 15-year-old to safety from a bridge after he lost his footing and was dangling from the edge Monday night.

Officers had been trying to talk to the distraught teen when he started teetering and then slipped, said Sgt. Mary Brodt. He yelled, “Help” and officer Marshall Titus ran over to grab onto him.

“I don’t know how (Titus) held on as long as he did,” said Brodt, the officer’s supervisor. “He was basically supporting (the teen’s) whole body weight.”

Three other officers joined Titus to hold onto the teen on the Earl Street bridge over Phalen Boulevard, but “they were literally losing their grip,” Brodt said.

“We were very fearful we weren’t going to be able to hang on.”

Four firefighters who had responded to the scene ran to help and they worked together to hoist the boy to safety, Brodt said.

The officers involved in the rescue “are very humble about it,” Brodt said Tuesday. “They say, ‘It’s just another day on the job,’ but I say, ‘You don’t have to save people from a bridge every day.’ ”

The case was the third time in a week that St. Paul police officers saved someone from jumping off a bridge.

Officers talked a man off the Smith Avenue bridge Saturday and a woman from the John Ireland Boulevard overpass last Wednesday, said Cmdr. Mary Nash, St. Paul police crisis negotiator team leader.

Despite those instances, suicide by jumping from high places is a relatively rare way that people kill themselves — it’s less than 1.5 percent of suicides, said Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education in Bloomington.

Another myth is that suicide is more prevalent this time of year, around the holidays. In fact, the suicide rates are lowest in November and December, Reidenberg said.

The Monday incident occurred about 6:45 p.m., when officers were called about a juvenile on the Earl Street bridge, threatening to jump.

Officers found the teen sitting on the sidewalk of the bridge’s peak. They began to approach, hoping to talk to him, but he climbed over a 6-foot-high railing and stood at the bridge’s edge.

He was muttering countdowns to jump, police said.

Police continued to try to communicate with the teen. The four officers involved had taken crisis-intervention training, Brodt said.

The St. Paul Police Department began in recent years to put its new hires through the 40-hour training, and longer-standing officers have also been receiving it.

On Monday, when the teen slipped, he stopped from falling into the road below by grabbing onto the bottom of the bridge’s railing, Brodt said.

“There wasn’t much space for any of us to get at him,” she said. Officer Nathan Smith climbed over the railing to hold onto the teen, a dangerous situation for the officer.

Brodt said she plans to nominate Titus and Smith, plus the two other officers involved in the rescue — Ben Moody and Hector Mena-Carrion — for the department’s life-saving award.

“They felt good they were able to save him and are hoping he gets the help he needs,” Brodt said.

The teen was taken to a hospital for evaluation.

SUICIDE PREVENTION

Signs to watch for: People who communicate thoughts of suicide, hopelessness or say there is no future for them. People who look for ways to die or search for such information online.

You can help by asking “in a really compassionate, not a judgmental way” if they’re thinking of killing themselves, said Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Suicide Awareness Voices of Education. Asking doesn’t put a thought in someone’s head to commit suicide, but will reduce their stress level if they are thinking of it, he said.

Know about resources to offer someone at risk. The National Suicide Prevention lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) will route people to the nearest crisis center. Additional information is at save.org.

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.