Man jumps off Harvard Bridge, no body found
Ho yin Au
Man jumps off Harvard Bridge, no body found
The search for a man who jumped off the Harvard Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday, Jan. 1 has been suspended due to river conditions. A memorial on the bridge identifies the man as Joe Gage, a 32-year-old Boston resident. According to tweets from the Boston Fire Department (@BostonFire), two men were crossing the bridge around 3 a.m. on Jan. 1. About halfway across, they hailed a cab, and as one man walked toward the vehicle, Gage jumped over the railing into the Charles River. According to the District Attorney’s office, witnesses reported that he jumped intentionally.
Authorities closed the bridge to search the river with the hope of finding Gage alive. Divers from the Boston Fire Department, the Cambridge Fire Department, and the State Police searched the partially frozen water for eight hours. The Boston and Cambridge Fire Departments suspended their search at sunrise, while State Police divers continued the search into the early afternoon. Divers had zero visibility in the 7.5-foot-deep water and searched in a grid pattern by “feeling along the river bottom,” according to a tweet from the Boston Fire Department. After Gage was in the water for two hours and 15 minutes, Boston Fire tweeted that the search had become a recovery operation, meaning they did not anticipate a rescue. Memorial services for Gage were held in Newmarket, New Hampshire on Sunday, Jan. 6. State Police will continue to investigate the incident.
—Jaya Narain