Police won't charge man who fell after pretending to fall off bridge

When police are paged in the middle of the night, they say they always know something's wrong. "Unless you work the night shift," said Bloomington Police Commander Kevin Herman, "Nothing good can happen at 4 in the morning."

And for a 23-year-old man on Sunday, nothing did. "There were just a number of things that went wrong for this guy," Herman said.

Stopped on the shoulder of the Cedar Avenue Bridge in Bloomington, the man got out of a car to urinate, and climbed up on the ledge to frighten his friend. "He looked back at his buddy and made the joke, 'Look at me I'm falling,'" Herman said. "And before he knew it, that's what happened."

It was a 30 foot freefall before he landed in some grass, surrounded by a giant marsh so remote, 50 responders answering his friend's 911 call didn't know how to save him. "It almost looks like the everglades out there," said Eagan Fire Chief Mike Scott. "The debate was how do you get him out of there."

Emergency crews knew the area was swampy, and they first brought a boat. But when they couldn't reach the man, the rescue got far more complex, requiring special equipment they'd never used before. That equipment was a winch, which firefighters used to lower a basket. They strapped the injured man in, then slowly raised him back up to the bridge deck, likely saving his life. The Eagan Fire Department bought the winch seven years ago, and didn't think they'd ever use it.

"It was great innovation on the firefighters' part," Scott said. "I was on the committee at the time, (and I remember) somebody saying, 'Boy if we only need it once it'll pay for itself.' It's about a $5,000 option. And it paid for itself. There's no ongoing criminal investigation, we just hope the guy heals up okay," Herman said. (There's no ticket for stupidity.) We'd be giving them out left and right."

With news video.