www.theleaven.com | Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas | Vol. 31, No. 36 april 30, 2010
No bridge too far Father and son race to save woman from Kansas River Story and Photos by Joe Bollig
Skylar Ross, 17, and his father, Matt Ross, return to the site where their rescue saga began — the south end of the Wyandotte Street bridge, which crosses the Kansas River at De Soto. There on the evening of April 15, they saw a woman step over the edge. After calling emergency personnel, they began their long run along the riverbank, hoping to save the jumper’s life.
D
E SOTO — It was an unusual sight — a woman walking across the Wyandotte Street Bridge — that caused Matt Ross and his son Skylar to look back in the truck’s rearview mirrors as they drove past. As they watched, the woman stopped, took a step over the first guardrail, then the second, and disappeared. She didn’t hesitate at all. They turned and looked at each other. “Did she just jump?” said Matt. Skylar, very surprised, just nodded his head. Matt slowed, whipped the truck around, gunned the engine, and drove back to the place where they thought the woman had been. If she had fallen to the railroad tracks 70 feet below, she was in big trouble. And if she was in the Kansas River . . . well, that was big trouble, too.
A day like any other
The Rosses belong to Sacred Heart Parish in Tonganoxie, but live near Linwood, in southern Leavenworth County. On April 15, Matt had gotten off work early and checked on his mother, who lives in De Soto. When he got home, his younger son, Skylar, was icing his left knee. Skylar had hurt himself at a track meet earlier in the day. Matt asked if he’d like to help
The men looked first over one side, then the other. There she was spotted, floating on her back, feet-first and head up, going east with the current. “Can you swim?” Matt hollered. “No,” she said faintly. Matt called 911, but the operator kept asking for an address. “We’re on the bridge, the only bridge in town,” he told the person, and finally gave an intersection on the south end of town. Almost immediately, they heard the sirens of rescue and law enforcement.
Run for a life
Matt Ross points across the Kill Creek railroad bridge to where he, Skylar and Capt. Todd Maxton ran after their first rescue attempt failed at the confluence of Kill Creek and the Kansas River. At this point, the woman was far out into the river, which was flowing about three miles an hour. clean out a culvert at his grandmother’s house, and Skylar agreed. It took a while to change clothes and gather tools, so by the time they got to the Wyandotte Street Bridge over the Kansas River, it was already about 7:10 p.m. It’s not unheard of to see pedestrians on the bridge, but it was definitely rare, for two reasons. First, there’s no sidewalk — just a short space between a white line and the first rail. Second, north of the bridge is countryside —
nothing to walk to. The pedestrian they saw that day was a woman in her 50s or 60s, and she was walking north as they drove south into town. “She had an expression on her face,” said Matt. “I would have to describe it as hurt, maybe bewildered.” Stunned as they were by her jump, they were out of the truck and scrambling toward the guardrails within seconds.
It only took about three minutes for the first responders to reach the scene, where Matt and Skylar filled them in on what had happened. Matt also told them where they needed to go. Matt grew up in De Soto and spent many a boyhood day along the river. “I said the best way to get to the river was to go down past the ballparks, along the grain elevator, and along the railroad tracks to Kill Creek,” said Matt. While members of the Northwest Consolidated Fire District and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department began to arrive and spread out over a distance of three miles along the river, Matt threw his truck in reverse, backed his way off Turn to “rescue” on page 4