Bystander recounts climbing construction crane to save a life
Police say bystanders risk making a situation worse when they get involved
The scariest night of Jay Bascha’s life began with a walk through downtown San Jose before dawn on Monday, August 5.
Bascha and some friends had been out at San Pedro Square Market when they came across police officers and bystanders milling near a construction site on 4th and East Santa Clara streets, across from city hall. Someone who had expressed suicidal thoughts, they learned, had climbed one of the two construction cranes that tower over the downtown skyline.
“I was calling and screaming for them,” Bascha, who didn’t know the climber, said. “‘Come down, come down, what are you doing up there?’”
San Jose Police Department officers had responded at about 1:30 a.m. to calls about a man in a red shirt and black hoodie climbing up the crane. When Bascha and his friends stopped, officers told them to move along, that police had everything under control.
But Bascha wasn’t easily dissuaded. He stepped away to use the restroom and then — after asking some strangers to record a last-minute video of him explaining what he was doing — he jumped the fence into the construction site and began climbing the crane.
“I was just in the moment,” he said. “And then when I realized like, oh my God, I’m getting tired, and it was hitting me that it was actually happening.”
Bascha said he felt compelled to help the climber because he
was scared for the man’s life, and because “I love everybody around me, even if I didn’t know them.”
“I’m very social butterfly like, I love people everywhere I go,” he said.
Bascha went all the way up crane and close to the climber, later identified as Mason Dewayne Aaron, 30, who had by then gone past the control cabin. When Bascha got there, he introduced himself, and tried to build rapport with Aaron.
“‘My name’s Jay, I’m a hairstylist, I love people. I love making people look glamorous and beautiful,’” Bascha remembered saying. “I’m here for you. If you were in my chair I would definitely take care of you and make sure you’re going to look bomb, you’re going to look good, so you should trust me. I’m your friend.’”
His work as a hairstylist helped him connect with the climber, Bascha said, because he’s used to people confiding in him, treating him as a kind of therapist.
The climber, who was also talking to family members on the phone, would calm down before having moments where he would again express suicidal thoughts, Bascha said. Eventually he agreed to start climbing down. Bascha told him he was scared to go down and asked the climber to go first, as a way to stop him from changing his mind and going back up.
When they got close to the bottom, some time before 5 a.m., officers told Bascha to go all the way down and he was handcuffed while police officers finished bringing down Aaron, who was arrested for obstructing or delaying a peace officer, trespassing and an outstanding misdemeanor warrant. Officers told Bascha not to try something like that again, but let him go.
“We would prefer that (bystanders) allow the police to just handle the call,” said Jason Dwyer, captain of the San Jose Police Department’s special operations division. When other
people get involved, they risk worsening a delicate situation, he aid.
“What we’ve seen time and again in San Jose is that those people come down when they want, when they’re ready to,” Dwyer said. Officers would never try to go up and try to physically bring someone down from a crane or other elevated surface.
“That’s just not going to end well for anybody,” he said.
That philosophy was tested the day after Bascha’s climb, when officers and members of the Santa Clara County Mobile Crisis Response Team responded to a call about a man who had climbed a wall surrounding the open plaza at San Jose City Hall.
In that case, Dwyer said, the individual did not seem to be threatening to injure himself but rather seemed to be protesting something — officers weren’t able to determine exactly what. After about an hour officers left, deciding that arresting the man for trespassing on the wall wasn’t worth the confrontation.
“There was really no need to apprehend him at that point,” Dwyer said.
But two activists who helped talk down that climber after more than 14 hours said the police should have done more to help someone that the activists said was in crisis —
not staging a protest. Neither police nor the activists have identified the man.
“He was clearly going through a psychotic break,” said Shaunn Cartwright, one of the two activists that stayed with the city hall climber until the end. “To just ignore all three of us was just unconscionable.”
Cartwright, a community homelessness advocate, said the climber went from calm moments to times where he was agitated and expressed suicidal ideations. She said the stress of talking the man down, and knowing there were no police responders there if he jumped or accidentally fell, was a traumatic experience.
Bascha, thinking back to the risk that he or the climber could have fallen off the crane, said he would not get involved again. Still, he said he approached the situation with the best intentions.
“I just wanted to help somebody,” he said.
If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline offers free, roundthe-clock support, information and resources for help. Reach the lifeline at 800273-8255.
Santa Clara County’s Crisis Hotline can be reached anonymously and confidentially at 1-855-278-4204 24 hours a day.