Police say Washington State DB Grant Porter helped save man's life
Pullman police praised a Washington State football player for helping prevent a possible suicide attempt earlier this week.
WSU redshirt freshman Grant Porter may have saved a man’s life early Wednesday morning when he and a friend saw the man on a basketball court near his apartment building. According to the Seattle Times, police said the 24-year-old man was “standing on a black folding chair with his hands tied around his back and a strap around his neck” with “the opposite end of the strap attached to the basketball hoop.”
After driving past the man at first, Porter turned around and approached him.
“I was coming back from Moscow, Idaho and we were going back to my apartment,” Porter said in an interview Friday night. “We see a man standing on a chair with a rope tied around his neck and his hands tied, and we made a U-turn to go back around and see what’s going on. At first I thought it was a joke or a prank to get attention. I didn’t think it was serious. But I wasn’t going to just drive past without seeing what was going on.”
Porter cautiously went up to the man.
“I said, ‘Are you OK? Do you need anything?’” Porter said.
The man told Porter he had been kidnapped.
“But then I looked at his wrists and he had scars on his wrists like he had cut himself,” Porter said.
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Porter kept talking to the man, who stepped off the chair. Porter then helped the man untie himself before the man retreated to his car.
Porter talked the man off the chair and then helped to untie his hands. As soon as he was loose, the man thanked Porter and gathered up the chair and the strap and bundled into his car. That reaffirmed Porter’s notion that the man had not been a victim of a kidnapping.
“He wouldn’t have taken all the stuff with him if it was a kidnapping,” Porter said.
From there, Porter’s friend, University of Idaho student Allison Schomburg, called police. When authorities arrived, the man was sitting in his car. Pullman police chief Gary Jenkins said the man told officers he was depressed. Per KREM, police took the man to a local hospital for evaluation.
Porter arrived at Washington State last year as a wide receiver and redshirted the 2016 season. He recently made the switch to defensive back and had two tackles in the Cougars’ spring game.
For more Washington State news, visit WazzouWatch.com.
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Sam Cooper is a writer for the Yahoo Sports blogs. Have a tip? Email him or follow him on Twitter!
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