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A heroic police officer managed to talk a suicidal man out of jumping off a bridge - by talking to him about football. Officer Blackmore, and two other officers, responded to a call about an incident on the South Carolina Highway 277 in Columbia, in the early hours of Saturday morning. The emotional footage shows the man sobbing as he sits on the side of the bridge while Officer Michael Blackmore from the Columbia Police Department attempts to engage him in conversation. It took eight and a half minutes for Blackmore to talk the man out of jumping and persuade him to step back over the side of the barrier. In the clip, Blackmore starts to ask the man about his home, his job and his family, before turning the conversation around to sports.