Faltecha Munch, 41, of Fort Pierce, discusses her ordeal of jumping off the Seaway Drive Bridge to kill herself on Aug. 17, and being rescued by three teens from Okeechobee who were fishing from a pier under the bridge. “I was just in so much pain ... but I think it was the fever and sleep deprivation that I just wasn’t thinking clearly,” Munch said about jumping.
By Elliott Jones
FORT PIERCE — A despondent Faltecha Munch, 41, sat in her motorized wheelchair at the highest part of Seaway Drive Bridge for a half hour in the darkness early Aug. 17, contemplating plunging to her death 75 feet below.
She wanted to die.
Munch was homeless from recently being evicted from her apartment and was out of money, living in the shadows in a park by the bridge. She said a man even tried to rape her in the park.
She was feverous from an infected bug bite that had swollen her face. And no one was listening — including a fast food restaurant clerk who had just turned away the hungry woman holding $4 a passerby gave her. The restaurant had just closed.
In desperation, Munch decided to die.
As she headed toward the bridge she thought of driving in front of a train. But she continued up the bridge. There she wrote a note saying, “Thanks for not coming to get me.”
She stood up at 2 a.m., slid over the rail and fell to the rushing water of the Fort Pierce Inlet below, looking up at the sky.
“My life was in the toilet,” she said Thursday after being released from medical treatment following her rescue by three strangers, all teenage friends from Okeechobee who happened to be fishing under the bridge that night.
She said the efforts Travis Mauldin, 17, Cody Beasley, 17, and Brandon Smith, 16, changed her life. Munch since then decided “to not give up, not now, not ever,” she said.
She paused and tears filled her eyes Thursday as she dwelled on the decision to jump. She is staying at a friend’s Fort Pierce home until her next Social Security check arrives.
“Something happened when I saw those kids” in the water, she said. “It was the most astounding thing:” risking their lives to save her.
On Wednesday, the Fort Pierce Police Department recognized the heroism of the youths.
She hadn’t yet met them, but if she does should would tell them, “They deserve every bit of that,” recognition, she said. “They helped when no one wanted to.”
At first, the boys thought the huge splash was a large dolphin or whale. It was Munch crashing into the water and sinking to the bottom. She gulped water while surfacing and emerged stunned — going in and out of consciousness.
When the youths saw a floating, motionless body they jumped into the strong-moving tide as others watched or called 911. She did notice the 150-pound, 6-foot-tall Mauldin, floundered and dragged down by the weight of his water-soaked blue jeans far from the shore.
“I did not want them to die for my stupidity,” said Munch.
She told them to leave, despite her in pain from breaking bones in the fall.
But Mauldin didn’t stop.
“I couldn’t watch someone float away and die,” he said soon after the rescue, which included swimming with her for 300 yards across a strong current. Their efforts finally touched her heart.
Now, Munch wants to fight against her eviction from an apartment in Fort Pierce where she had lived for years.
Munch, a former nursing assistant and house painter, will continue facing an array of health problems, including an ailing heart that contributed to her desperation. She said she has had eight surgeries and lost her spleen. Currently, she is recuperating from the injuries sustained from the fall: two fractured ribs and sternum and a collapsed lung.
All the while she keeps her rescuers in mind.
“I hope that whatever they want to achieve comes to them,” she said. “Good should come to them, too.”
Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers doesn’t customarily report on suicides and name people involved, but may when the incident happens in a public place, in the public eye or includes other factors.
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