Kendall Reyes

Kendall Reyes saved a woman from falling, Palm Beach, Florida, June 18, 2023. In the morning, a 67-year-old woman, who was distraught, went to the flat, gravel-lined roof of a six-story condominium building. Alarmed, a coworker, who feared for the woman’s safety as she was about 50 feet above a parking lot, went to the roof to encourage her to come down. After police were contacted to check on the woman’s wellbeing, the responding officers ascended to the roof-access hatch but kept their distance as the woman moved toward the 2-foot-high wall enclosing the roof. Arriving next, Reyes, 38, was an on-duty police officer who had completed crisis-intervention training. Reyes learned that the woman made statements suggesting she was considering suicide and had left a note to that effect. Reyes ascended to the roof, where she, with help from the coworker, attempted to create a rapport with the woman as she paced close to the wall. Surreptitiously, other officers followed Reyes onto the roof and hid out of the woman’s view. After several minutes of Reyes trying to lure her away from the wall, the woman sat on the roof ledge, with both of her legs over the wall and her hands on the ledge. Concluding that the woman was about to jump or fall, Reyes sprinted about 15 feet to the woman, who was about Reyes’s weight, grasped the woman’s shoulders with both hands, and pulled her backward from the ledge onto the rooftop. Seeing Reyes holding the struggling woman down, the officers ran to help Reyes detain her. Police then escorted the woman outside to an ambulance, which took her to a hospital. Reyes had minor scrapes to her hands and knees.