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A city police officer saved a distraught man from falling to his death from an eighth floor apartment Sunday morning. The officer's body camera was recording as the man dangled from a window in the Trent Center high-rise apartments on Greenwood Avenue. The rookie officer, Freddy Jimenez, was there because the man's wife had just died of natural causes, police said. During routine police work, the distraught man went to another room and climbed out of a window and was hanging by his fingertips. The apartments do not have balconies. When Jimenez entered the room, all that is visible is the man's knuckles. The man is heard saying to himself, in distress, "Do it, do it, do it." Jimenez grabs for the man, calls for backup - he was the only officer in the apartment - and starts talking to him.
"Sir, please don't! Sir hang on!' Jimenez says. "I am here to help you - please!"
The man then asks the officer to grab his leg and says, "I don't want to die."
"I don't want you to die," Jimenez responds.
"I got you, I got your leg," Jimenez says as he struggles to haul the man inside.
Jimenez then collapses to the floor with the man and reports on his radio the man is safe - all before backup arrives. A police spokesman said Jimenez's heroic actions speak for themselves on the video, which the department made public Tuesday after news spread among officers about how dramatic it was. Jimenez graduated from the police academy in October 2016.