From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is unfictional.

Unfictional is KCRW's program of memorable stories and documentaries.

It's part of the Independent Producer Project, which is our effort to support and champion the work of

independent radio producers.

And today on the program a man climbs over a bridge rail 200 feet in the air and

steps off.

I went up there completely knowing and it already made the choice. So there wasn't any stopping and talking I just got out and dove off. Oh, The Sunshine Skyway Bridge is part of a list that includes the Aurora Bridge in Seattle and the Golden Gate Bridge,

places that people often travel to for one dark purpose.

Haven't we all at one time or another thought,

could I be crazy enough to jump from a bridge 200 feet and land in water that is going to feel like a

parking lot when I hit it.

Rich Halton is a

now based in Atlanta, but he spent many years in Florida in the shadow of the Sunshine

Skyway Bridge. You know for people who don't know the Sunshine Skyway

is to Floridians I guess pretty much what the Golden Gate Bridge is to

San Francisco's. It's a traffic thoroughfare that they just couldn't do without.

It spans the mouth of Tampa Bay, it's about five and a half miles long.

Millions of drivers depend upon it every year. It's part of the interstate system.

And about 30 years ago, a ship crashed into it in a really dense fog. But they rebuilt it to have a very, very tall center

span and when they did that, that's what made it attractive to bridge jumpers. If they got up to the where the span was the highest, parked

their car, they could just go over a small wall and they were in the water. I became kind of obsessed with the bridge and stories about the bridge and I knew

that occasionally people would jump off the bridge, you know, to commit suicide.

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