Hot pursuit turns to dramatic rescue

(Valhalla - WABC, May 2, 2007) (WABC) -- Police say the driver of a tractor trailer cab went wild and busted away from a routine traffic stop. After a pursuit, police from New York City, New Jersey and Westchester finally cornered him on the Tappan Zee bridge. And that's when he jumped.

Eyewitness News reporter Lisa Colagrossi is live outside Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla.

It was quite a dramatic end to this police chase. The man jumped off the Tappan Zee Bridge into the Hudson River, and he's lucky to have survived at all. He's now in critical condition being treated for internal injuries.

"At first he was hiding from us. I think he was ducking under the water, but you can only hold your breath for so long. We kept telling him, 'let us get you'. And he kept telling us, 'no I want to die, I want to die'. That's not our job, we were going to let that happen," said Sleepy Hollow Fire Chief John Korzelius.

Helicopters and police cars led the chase, but once the man jumped, it was a 40 foot drop into the ice cold waters of the Hudson River.

Then the pursuit suddenly became a rescue, with marine units taking the lead.

"We knew he was on the pilings because he really wasn't sinking. That's what worried us because we couldn't see his hands, he wouldn't show us his hands, and finally law enforcement made him show us his hands. Once he did that we got the okay to jump in and grab him," said Chief Korzelius.

The man shouted that he wanted to die and told the men on the boat to shoot him. Police say he turned violent when they finally got to him, and then seemed to quickly fade.

"At that point he went limp and he started becoming incoherent. At that point we knew we were in trouble and needed to get him out as fast as we could . As soon as he got on the boat we started administering first aid," Chief Korzelius.

The man's identity has not been released yet. Police say they don't know why he took off from the the traffic stop, but they suspect that the truck had been stolen.

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