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Bridge Jumpers Create Headache That Won't Go Away

August 04, 2009 - BUXTON -- It could take a change in state law to keep jumpers off the Salmon Falls Bridge, state law enforcement officials say.

For now, there is little that can be done to prevent teenagers and other youngsters from jumping into the Saco River from the state-owned Route 202 bridge linking Hollis and Buxton.

Jack Vincent, 12, of Portland was critically injured at the bridge Tuesday when he was struck by a truck as he darted into traffic while getting a running start to leap off the concrete railing.

York County District Attorney Mark Lawrence said Wednesday that he cannot prosecute the criminal trespass summonses issued to bridge jumpers by police. Maine Department of Transportation officials said fencing off the bridge is impractical. Hollis and Buxton town officials said they don't have any quick answers.

Even as Vincent remained in critical condition at Maine Medical Center, swimmers continued to congregate at the bridge Wednesday. A number of boys jumped off the span while nearly 30 children gathered nearby on an old railroad bridge abutment, another popular jumping point.

With the sun beating down on the bridge jumpers, they plunged individually and in groups some 25 feet into the cool water below.

One of them was 17-year-old Alex Munson of Buxton, who said he has jumped off the bridge before.

"It's not as exciting as most people think. The swim back is pretty far," Munson said.

The popular bridge-jumping spot has long posed a safety hazard and a law enforcement headache. For generations, people have flocked to the narrow, heavily traveled bridge, the scene of a number of serious traffic accidents.

In 1997, police cracked down after more than 100 young people swarmed the bridge on a hot summer day, blocking traffic and intimidating drivers. Since then, the speed limit has been lowered from 45 mph to 35 mph; no-parking and no-jumping signs have been installed; and police have issued countless summonses to jumpers for criminal trespass.

Officials also have held numerous meetings to try to deter jumpers, including one organized three years ago by York County Sheriff Maurice Ouellette, whose department shares patrol duties on the bridge with the Buxton police and Maine State Police.

He was concerned about safety on the bridge, which has no sidewalk and is used by an average of 8,600 vehicles a day.

"It is a very narrow bridge with a lot of truck traffic, and from the Buxton side has a blind approach," said Ouellette, who as a state police diver once retrieved the body of a truck driver who crashed and went off the bridge.

Buxton and Hollis officials said they have few answers. Hollis Board of Selectmen Chairman Stuart Gannett Sr., 70, who has lived in town his entire life, said Buxton pushed the problem across the bridge into Hollis when it closed parking on its side a few years back.

"It did not improve the situation," he said.

Jean Harmon, chairwoman of the Buxton selectmen, said it would take round-the-clock enforcement to solve the problem on the bridge, which she said lies in Hollis.

"I could be wrong, but it comes back to the question of whose responsibility is it?" Harmon said.

Although the state owns the bridge, the MDOT said it has done what it could to address the problem, and that erecting a fence to keep out jumpers is not practical.

"It boils down to cost, effectiveness and risk," said Mark Latti, an MDOT spokesman.

He said there are dozens of bridges that serve as springboards to swimming holes across the state, and it would cost millions to fence them all. The state has fenced just one bridge, the Memorial Bridge in Augusta, the scene of more than a dozen suicides.

Latti said it is not clear that the fences would prevent jumpers, and fences could make it difficult to clear snow and conduct safety inspections.

Lawrence said that although his office has no policy against enforcing the law on the bridge, the summonses for criminal trespass that have come to his office so far have not constituted criminal offenses.

The problem is that criminal trespass requires a refusal to leave the property when asked by a property owner or law enforcement official. At the Salmon Falls Bridge, swimmers comply with requests to leave by jumping off the bridge, he said.

Lawrence said he will meet with the county sheriff's office later this summer and possibly come up with a local ordinance that would give Hollis and Buxton some clout to enforce the jumping ban.

But creating such ordinances is not easy, say safety officials who have attempted to do so in other communities. Saco Deputy Police Chief Charles Labonte said Saco and Biddeford tried to come up with an ordinance to prevent swimmers from jumping off the Pine Street Bridge, which spans their communities over the Saco River, after an 11-year-old drowned in 2002.

The ordinance proposal faded away over concerns about government interference, LaBonte said.

"The final decision was, do we feel one lost life is compelling enough to prevent the practice of swimming in the Saco River?" Labonte said.

Ouellette said it is just a matter of time before the Salmon Falls Bridge becomes the scene of another tragedy. He said that if current law is not sufficient to allow the prosecution of bridge-jumping swimmers, then the law should be changed.

"We need the Legislature to go back into session to fix the law," he said.

By BETH QUIMBY and MELANIE CREAMER, Staff Writers, Portland Press Herald, July 30, 2009


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