All it took was a pizza pie to lure a suicidal man from the edge of life and death.
A man threatened to jump from the Ravenel Bridge in Charleston, S.C., Monday morning.
Police and rescue workers shut down the bridge, blocking southbound traffic as they tried to talk the man down. The steaming cheesy goodness wafting from an Andolini’s pepperoni pie that was brought by an officer is what finally convinced him to the ledge after nearly five hours.
Within minutes of the officer sliding the open pizza box onto the hood of his vehicle, the man gave himself up to police and was escorted off the site for treatment, the Charleston Post and Courier reported.
A.J. Castle, Andolini’s general manager and maker of the life-saving pizza became a local hero to customers.
“Dude, your pizza is saving lives this morning,” one customer said as he arrived for lunch at the Mount Pleasant establishment, according to the Post and Courier.
Police called an order in for the pepperoni pizza pie at approximately 10:15 a.m., and Castle not only prepared the order in time for the officer to claim it, but also gave it to him for free.
“I figured he was doing a good deed, I might as well do him a good deed as well,” he said.
“I’ve been here for nine years and nothing like this has ever happened,” Castle said. “But I’m not going to take credit for what happened. I was just doing my job.”