Patient threatens to jump from roof

The 41-year-old man was poised on top of the 90 ft building and threatening to kill himself.

Police officers together with fire fighters and ambulance personnel were called to the building on the site of the former Roundway Hospital at 8.30am on Sunday.

A trained police negotiator talked to the man from the ground but after a couple of hours a second trained police negotiator, Devizes-based Sergeant Dave Bonner-Smith, was called out.

Sgt Bonner-Smith had negotiated with the patient once before, on August 28, when he had threatened to throw himself from a bridge in Pans Lane.

The sergeant, who had worked the night shift on Saturday, climbed up three sets of ladders to access the roof of the derelict building.

The patient was sitting on the edge of the roof with his legs dangling over the side. Sgt Bonner-Smith also sat on the edge with his legs positioned towards the roof. He said: "I spoke to him as I was sitting on the ledge and I had a cigarette with him.

"He was threatening to throw himself off the roof and end it all. I was worried for his safety and I had the opportunity to pull him in.

"I grabbed him around the neck and pulled him away from the edge. There was a slight struggle at first but he calmed down and was okay and we came back down together.

"A police negotiator was there from 9am and various strategies were taken. I had spoken to him on a previous occasion when he went missing from Green Lane Hospital.

"When I got to the scene on Sunday I volunteered to go up on to the roof to do a more direct thing."

The patient was arrested and later sectioned under the Mental Health Act. A spokesman for Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, which runs Green Lane Hospital, said that the voluntary patient had left the ward as he did everyday.

She added that nursing and medical staff had worked with the police to persuade him to come down from the roof and that he later returned to the ward.