Woman trying to kill herself in Al Mamzar saved by paramedics

Dubai: A quick response by paramedics helped prevent a woman from killing herself at Al Mamzar beach as she tried to drown herself officials said on Wednesday.

Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services (DCAS) said the distressed woman rang emergency authorities from a public phone and threatened to commit suicide on Monday at around 3pm.

Police, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and paramedics were dispatched to the scene and the woman was spotted after a long search.

“We were driving around the area trying to locate the unknown woman who called the emergency number from one of the many public phone booths in Al Mamzar, until we spotted someone behaving strangely across the Corniche,” said Ahmad Bader, one of two paramedics who saved the Emirati woman, who was in her thirties. “We called out to her from a distance, and the next thing she did was take off her slippers and run frantically.”

Bader said that was when they knew she was the woman threatening to commit suicide, they had to keep their distance so she wouldn’t run towards the water and drown herself. “We told her we were there to help, but she kept ignoring us and decided to throw herself into the water. My colleague ran after her and, by the time he reached her, the water was up to her neck. She kept resisting and putting her head under water.”

Bader said the other paramedic struggled to pull the woman out because she weighed over 130kg. “He couldn’t help her out of the water alone, so I had to swim in and help grab her.”

Luckily the woman did not swallow any water and was not hurt, he said. The paramedics then performed first-aid on her and checked her blood pressure and sugar levels, which were reported to be normal.

The paramedics said the incident was quiet challenging because trying to locate her in the area was hard. “We didn’t know who that woman was and we didn’t know how to locate her before it was too late, we only knew she was in Al Mamzar. The next challenge was to take her out of the water. Thankfully we saved her and police then arrested her.”

The two paramedics were then honoured by DCAS for saving the woman.