Medal of Bravery
Awarded on: 1987-08-04
Invested on: 1987-09-25
Early in the afternoon of January 16, 1986, Roger Leduc, a security officer with the Montreal Urban Community Transport Society, was able to prevent a suicide in a downtown Montreal, Quebec, subway station. An 18 year-old girl had climbed out onto a cement beam some 15 metres above the tracks. Mr. Leduc, having received an emergency call, ran to the station's upper level where he grabbed a cigarette from a colleague, jumped over the guardrail, sat astride the beam and handed the cigarette to the girl as a conversation gambit. Talking calmly, he won her confidence and managed to distract her while other emergency crew placed a safety net under the beam. Once this was in place, a colleague distracted the girl so that Mr. Leduc was able to grab her and pull her off the beam to safety. Mr. Leduc had, throughout this episode, risked falling to his death from the precarious perch.