Dedicated to averting suicide
Dressed in his bright yellow coat, Jack Gielen was hard to miss last Thursday as he strolled the streets of Matamata hoping to make a difference.
As secretary of the New Zealand Suicide Prevention Trust, he said the trust was focusing on helping people in rural Waikato towns where there had been a number of suicides over the past five years.
Mr Gielen was giving people the chance to sign up as a volunteer with the group or ask for counselling if they needed it. arrested for breach of the peace after an incident on Tawa St.
When the Chronicle spoke to him, he said response had been good and if there was enough interest, he would look at starting a solace support group here.
‘‘We try not to focus on the negative when we talk to people who are suicidal but we work with the positive and living in hope,’’ he said. ‘‘ We do what we can to keep people alive.’’
The Suicide Prevention Trust provides telephone and face-to-face counselling for those at risk of suicide, 24 hours a day.
It also runs a Rainbow Ribbons programme for people who have lost someone to suicide and helps them through grief counselling and trauma recovery.
While Mr Gielen is not here right now offering the trust’s counselling services, it does not mean it is too late to sign up. Call the crisis helpline and response team on 0508 425 718 today.
About 4am New World was burgled after two offenders gained entry through a door and took a large quantity of cigarettes. Police are following lines of inquiry.
A Matamata woman was arrested for trespass after returning to an address she had been trespassed from.
Police attended a crash on State Highway 29 after a distracted driver spun out of control. No injuries were sustained.
A stolen motor vehicle was found on Lansdowne Rd with the engine still running.
A local man was arrested for breach of the liquor ban.
A vehicle was taken from outside a Findlater St address and was found 30 minutes later just down the road where another car had been entered by forcing the locks open.
At midnight, police were waved down by staff at Tracs Bar after a female collapsed and stopped breathing. An ambulance took her to Waikato Hospital. Alcohol is believed to be a factor and police are following up the incident.
A Warehouse staff member had their phone taken from the checkout counter. As a result, police went to a Raparapa Rd address and recovered the phone. Inquiries are continuing.
Police were called to assist ambulance staff after a 24- year- old woman abused staff and ambulance officers who had been called to assist her friend who had hurt himself after falling over.
A 24- year- old man was found and charged with various offences after crashing into a parked caravan.