Could “Suicide Nets” Stop Future Noyo Jumpers?

Are “suicide nets” a solution that Fort Bragg can embrace?

Mendocino County Safe Space Project offers help to teens.

How do we solve the problem of teen suicide? By putting nets or another barrier on local high bridges? By having some sort of community hug forum for all parents and teens?  

Although Manny Machado, Caltrans spokesman for the area has confirmed Caltrans is now investigating nets for the Noyo River Bridge, the first step is that everybody must be ready to listen and change.

When Archie and Edith Bunker dealt with hippie son-in-law “Meathead” and daughter Gloria, America laughed about the “generation gap.”

Today, the hippies are grandparents and their children face an even wider chasm with the iPhone generation. In 2024 the generation gap is more tragedy than comedy. Suicide among all teenagers and even younger kids has been on the rise for 15 years to historically high rates and even moving into second place for the cause of death in certain age categories for the first time. Suicide is now a major factor in 10-year-olds, once unthinkable.

I have personally observed this phenomenon and won’t go along with those of you who want me to pretend it isn’t happening.  Lots of our kids are in crisis! Lots of trans kids are living in hell!

Roy Mora’s heartbreaking death is the most public (probable) suicide in many years on the Mendocino Coast. Unfortunately, this 15-year-old child will be long remembered for his darkest hour. Nothing can change this but it can serve as a wake-up call about the issue of teen suicide, a growing reality that can no longer be ignored.

Roy Mora was “trans”, the teen category with the highest suicide rate. Suicide rates among all teens have been rising to the point that one in five teens has now seriously considered suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

The studies and my first-hand observations and personal confusion shows that the generations really don’t understand each other. I have seen it and have lost much sleep over this problem of others, not something usual for me, with so many of my own. The parents often really love the youngster and vice versa. Do those older generation absolutes count more than your kids? For youngsters, can they look away from the damn phone and slow down long enough to try to understand and forgive?  I can imagine myself on both sides, of course, being a Boomer.

Our generation at best doesn’t understand the entire trans phenomenon, at worst parents can turn their backs on a kid going through something few can fathom. But buckle-up buttercup, teenage girl suicides, and attempts are the other categories that have been up dramatically in recent years. We must find out why all of this is happening!

I won’t be asking Roy’s parents, I have always resisted doing this sensational thing. I had a friend in a Victim Witness who showed science that revealed media interviews sometimes were cathartic and helpful and sometimes awful for the families. But when the media shows up on the front door of people who are mourning, rarely does anything come from this but giving prying eyes a peek. They have suffered enough. Many other suicides have gone unnoticed because there was no search.

What is happening to our youth is not the media’s fault, nor is it being prevented by the masses of always angry folks who don’t know anybody involved but want me to stop talking about it.

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looking at mental health and suicidal behaviors from 2011 to 2021 indicates that 13 percent of high school girls had attempted suicide (30 percent had seriously considered it). That jumped to more than 20 percent for LGBTQ+ teens (45 percent had seriously considered it) (Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary and Trends Report: 2011–2021). The rate of teenage suicide attempts and suicides has been skyrocketing for 15 years to the extent it became the second leading cause of death among teens in 2021 by some measures and continues roughly there.

Bad. Very bad.

Talking about suicide publicly is also troublesome and can actually push a suicidal person over the edge. Studies have shown it increases suicidal ideation (SI) which means the idea of doing this has entered a person’s head.  And making suicide methods public does lead to actual suicide and attempts. This is why for a half century the SF Bay Area media never covered suicides unless they involved murder, like the time a dad threw his young daughter off and then jumped off the GG.  Unfortunately, our media here in Mendo has not practiced this discretion.

The media pact in SF reduced suicides and the data from that compelled most of us in the media to never report suicides unless they were openly in public, included murder or were by someone of exceptional prominence. Here in Mendo in recent years, many people have angrily demanded that people who have committed suicide be named. I say no. SF is right.\

Years ago I was doing research for my never-published story on Jeffrey Epstein and Leslie Wexner, whom the media falsely reports started Victoria’s Secret. I tracked down the story of the man who actually started Victoria’s Secret and sold it to Wexner. With considerable difficulty, I found that he had jumped off the GG bridge after selling the business didn’t solve personal and financial problems. I never knew the man but I’m glad his name is not tied eternally to an article about how he jumped off the GG bridge, the way Roy’s will be in the Google search. Even if angry people want to know, they don’t always need to.

My photos show the once-controversial suicide nets that now skirt the Golden Gate Bridge. Critics were wrong about everything. They did not serve as a challenge and thus increased suicides. They are also wrong that people will just find somewhere else to kill themselves. The science shows that once SI leaves a person’s head, it often doesn’t come back. And the science offers compelling evidence that taking away an easy method of suicide lowers suicide permanently.  People killed themselves with gas stoves at alarming rates in the UK in the 1960s until the government took carbon dioxide out of the gas supply, making it impossible. This resulted in a large and permanent dip in the suicide rate. People did not just find another way.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/449144?journalCode=cj

Suicides are down 80 percent in the number one place for them in California. The nets are made of marine-grade stainless steel. If someone jumps and sails 20 feet to land in the net they will get hurt.  The nets have not saved lives by catching lots of jumpers. They have stopped people from even coming to the bridge to commit suicide. Hundreds were talked out of jumping by the district, CHP, and such prior to the nets. Now 1/10th as many people come to the bridge to do this. And when they look down at the steel nets they change their mind. This article in the SF Standard has all the stats you would want but the article does not say how 4 people managed to do it anyway.  

San Francisco Standard article on Anti-Suicide Nets

Could we get nets here?  Should we? The Golden Gate Bridge nets are the gold standard. There are ways to discourage suicide that are cheaper, such as wobbly fencing that is hard to climb.That awful moment is often stopped by the slightest delay. San Diego has recently completed cheaper, but also effective barriers. The media stopping reporting on individual deaths helped there too. It adds a sense of glamor to someone feeling totally insignificant to think they would be remembered. Even coverage of Mora, intended to be a search story could do that. From what I have read, well-crafted articles that showed awful truths about suicide, such as the fact garnered from studies of survivors is that everyone regrets the impulse after making the jump or whatever IMMEDIATELY after doing it. They think about their bodies and feelings and are choked with regret. It is often too late.

Those GG nets cost $200 million for 1.7 miles of bridge. So they would still probably cost a million or more here to build nets like the ones shown here.

The seven tallest bridges in California are all in the Sierra Nevada, led by Placer County’s mind-bogglingly tall Foresthill Bridge, said to be the third tallest in America. (these stats are always dubious in the age of YouTube and Wikipedia as sources) It is 730 feet above the water You could stack the GG three times and not reach its bottom. It has attracted about 70 people to kill themselves since it was built in 1973. A net is not considered practical there. 

Here in Mendocino County, we have three very tall bridges, Albion River, Noyo River, and the tallest, Confusion Hill both ends which is higher off the water than the Golden Gate.. All three have attracted suicides in recent years but it’s been a regular problem on both the Noyo and Albion. Confusion HIll has also attracted a few.

You don’t hear about all the suicides and some of them, even the authorities never hear about.. There is no mechanism for law enforcement to inform us.. And many “invisible” people are lost, especially on the Golden Gate. I never report the ones I hear that others don’t. Matt and MendoFever has rarely missed anything big over the past few years. And the AVA would be next, but they both have missed bad stuff I have seen. A pair of teens once came to Albion River Bridge from the Midwest apparently to kill themselves a few years back. One died, the other survived.

Suicide deaths among 10- to 24-year-olds increased by 62% from 2007 to 2021. 2024 Research found that suicide is rising dramatically in preteens as young as 8 years old as well, with an 8.2% annual increase from 2008 to 2022.  Unfortunately, I have seen evidence of this firsthand. And I saw a young man actually jump off the Noyo River bridge. He survived and I have seen him in later years as a businessman. Contrary to myth, people don’t just keep trying until they finally succeed.  Sometimes help does work!

My friend Vern Hartman and I were eating at Carnini’s back before the turn of the century when we saw a man talking to the police on the Noyo River Bridge Railing. We left our fabulous big burgers and ran down below and Vern got a rope and buoy out just as he jumped. The first cop who arrived was Rickey Del Fiorentino. Nobody takes charge of my extra smart alpha Hillbilly pal Vern, but Rickey did. He told us what to do and he took his gun, belt, and radio off and jumped in fully uniformed. The guy was yelling about not being able to even kill himself. Rickey talked to him and Vern threw the rope just as the rest of the cops and rescuers arrived. They kind of pushed us aside and had better ropes and got Rickey out. When He came out he walked past them all and came up to Vern and shook his hand and said thanks. Rickey was murdered in the line of duty years later as a deputy then, 300 feet from my house. He was a truly great man and once a top-notch wrestler and football player at Napa High and remains a legend there.

I just stood there as the number two guy on the rope. You have to know Vern and Rickey.  I have argued with the late Paul McCarthy and Matt Lafever about our different views on reporting on suicides. I don’t feel they should be named unless there is an extreme reason for doing it.  Paul used to come by my warehouse and argue with me. We disagreed on quite a few topics but were both loud, blustery fellas who loved Massachusets and California, our former and current homes. When a former local doctor pulled a guy on someone he had once loved and then went outside and killed himself, Paul wrote it up and asked me if was going to give him a rash about this one also?. No way. That was the exception that made the rule. Matt agreed more should be done on all that is happening around here, but who has the time to be the only objective voice, basically for free? He is doing the most right now of anyone.

We need a media-wide suicide policy here. And should the new Albion River Bridge, if it does get approved, have suicide barriers?  It is 115 feet off the water and has been used along with Noyo for this desperate act.

Perhaps a more realistic idea is to get involved with the Mendocino County Safe Space Project.  We heard a presentation about the group at the Fort Bragg-Mendocino Lions Club. 

The group has a lot to offer families in this situation. 

Here is what they posted when it was revealed that the search for Roy had ended with a suicide.

“We at MCSSP are heartbroken to hear of Roy Mora’s death. We extend our deepest condolences to his parents, his brothers, his extended family, friends, teachers, classmates, first responders, community searchers, and so, so many more.

We understand that our community’s collective sense of loss and grief is hard to navigate. MCSSP pledges to boost our efforts to increase support for trans youth in our area, and we encourage you to reach out to us if you would to learn how to get involved. We will be providing lists of recourses over the next few days.

With love, respect, and healing,

Cynthia and Cinnamon Coupé, Matt Franks, Amy Scharmann, Courtney Morgan Cravens Jackie Jones Katie Turner-Carr”  The group includes not just LGBQT but also hetero folks. I dislike the term Cis-Gender personally. Like everybody else, I prefer to choose my own descriptor terms and that sounds like a pejorative. What is wrong with a term from cellular biology- hetero? 

I would agree to be called only  “human of heterogeneous sexual preferences” then gossips would have to stop talking about me because that is too hard to say.

A big takeaway would be not to believe the myth that if people are blocked from killing themselves one way, they will find another. That has been completely debunked by many, many studies on suicide and suicidal ideation.  

Please write me at frankhartzell@gmail.com with your thoughts. How can we make Roy’s life matter and keep the next kid alive?  

Other good stuff

National Suicide Prevention Hotline
1-800-273-TALK (8255)
or dial/text 988

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention, and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals.

Mental Health America – Centro de Recursos de Salud Mental en Español website

Línea directa nacional española de prevención del suicidio
1-888-628-9454

Mendocino County Crisis Hotline
1-855-838-0404
The Crisis Line is for someone who is experiencing a mental health crisis and needs help right away. The line is toll-free and open 24/7.

Mendocino County Warm Line
707-472-2311. The Warm Line is a telephone-based non-crisis support that provides emotional support and a compassionate ear for Mendocino County residents. It’s a resource for individuals who are feeling stressed, isolated, overwhelmed, or need emotional support. The Warm Line is available Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Trans Lifeline 

Translifeline link

This newer service describes itself like this “provides trans peer support for our community that’s been divested from police since day one. We’re run by and for trans people.”

(877) 565-8860

The California Youth Crisis line can be reached by call or text 24 hours a day.

800-843-5200

Cal Youth Crisis Line

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Article by
Frank Hartzell
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
707-964-6174