A Florida woman is making headlines after she recited Linkin Park lyrics to stop a man from jumping off a ledge.
“Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do” were the thoughtful words which made the man reconsider his decision of ending his own life.
Cristina Settanni, a healthcare worker in Orlando, was heading back from work when she spotted the guy sitting on the ledge of a bridge.
She first passed on, like a number of other motorists, but when she saw him again from her rear mirror, she decided to intervene in the situation.
Not knowing what to say at the moment, Cristina started by quoting some of her favorite lyrics from ‘One More Light’ by Linkin Park.
“I stopped because I’ve been where he was. So I know what it’s like to stand on the ledge and think that that’s your only option,” she said in a video posted by Florida’s Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
“He needed somebody to show that somebody cared enough to stop, and enough to tell him that he didn’t need to do that today.”
She added: “There was a moment he moved forward and I did kind of move towards him like, ‘Nope, if you go, I go.’
“It’s a Linkin Park song: ‘Who cares if one more light goes out / In a sky of a million stars?’
“Like, I do. One person cares. And I don’t know if it clicked with him, but he just cried.”
After cops showed up to the place, the anonymous guy was pulled to safety.
Deputy Shaun Cayer said of Cristina: “When I walked up and she had that really calm demeanor, it looked more like she was trying to help him than them making some kind of pact with each other.
“I’d have preferred if she didn’t sit on that side of the bridge with him.”
The story soon went viral, and Linkin Park even tweeted to thank Cristina for her kind gesture.
It was later revealed that the guy was going through a difficult time after making some bad decisions and letting down his family.
The cops sent him to a mental healthcare facility instead of arresting him.
“He figured that that was his only course of action now, was just to end it. Not be anybody else’s problem,” Deputy Cayer added.
Linkin Park released ‘One More Light’ in July 2017, just two months before the rock band’s frontman, Chester Bennington, took his own life.