A man in the middle of a mental health crisis jumped off the west bridge into the low-tide waters of the St. Lucie River near Southwest Martin Downs Boulevard on Wednesday night, setting off a rapid, multi-agency rescue that ended with him airlifted to a hospital with traumatic injuries. Martin County Fire Rescue, the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, and the Stuart Police Department all converged on the scene to pull him from the water alive.
According to WPBF, Martin County Fire Rescue responded to reports of an attempted suicide near the bridge, and a spokesperson confirmed the man jumped into the shallow, low-tide water below. Sheriff’s deputies and Stuart police officers then searched the river by boat, with sheriff’s office personnel ultimately locating the man and transporting him by boat to a nearby boat ramp, the outlet reported.
The bridge itself, which carries State Road 714 across the South Fork of the St. Lucie River between Palm City and Stuart, has a fixed vertical clearance of 55 feet above the water; that figure is clearance, not the length of its span, according to Marinas.com. That stretch of river forms part of Florida’s Okeechobee Waterway near Mile Marker 10, with shoals near the bridge.
Marine Units and a Rapid Extraction
The Martin County Sheriff’s Office Marine Unit maintains a dedicated fleet, including a 35-foot fire-pump boat and specialized shallow-water craft, patrolling county waterways seven days a week for searches, rescues, and interagency operations, per the agency’s own description of the unit. The unit keeps an on-call deputy available for exactly this kind of off-hours emergency marine response…