Clarke: I owe life to man in park
FORMER footballer Clarke Carlisle has revealed that a stranger persuaded him to speak to his family rather than take his own life.
The ex-Burnley defender, 38, disappeared from his home in Preston last month and sparked a missing persons appeal before he was found safe and well in Liverpool.
Carlisle revealed he had been “strolling around” Merseyside and was “headstrong set on the most convenient way to kill myself ” when a passing man intervened.
He said: “I didn’t know what was going on. This car pulled up while I was sat in a park and a guy came over.
“He sat next to me and he hugged me and cried on my shoulder, just urging me to get in touch with my family.”
The man called Carlisle’s heavily pregnant wife, Carrie, and put him on the phone. She said: “I heard his voice and it was literally like the best moment of my life.”
The father-of-three, who tried to kill himself when he walked in front of a lorry in 2014, spent three weeks in hospital and is now recovering at home.
He launched the Clarke Carlisle Foundation for Dual Diagnosis – a condition that has been described as “mental health problems co-occurring with drug or alcohol abuse”.
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