Rashomon

Respect to you sir, your cool head and calming words were instrumental in helping divert what may otherwise have been a tragedy.

I was there. I'm actually in that video, but hard to see. My girlfriend and I had left my motorcycle to be washed, then walked to Kad Suan Keaw mall to kill the hour and a half it was going to take to get the bike detailed. We had gone into Tops Market on the ground floor to get a few things, and when we came out, everyone was standing around looking up. The area right outside of Tops is where the escalators are, and it's an open atrium up to the fourth floor. I looked up but could only see a little kid looking over the railing on the top floor and crying. My girlfriend asked a Thai what was going on, and she was told that some farang had gotten into a huge fight with his Thai wife, then had grabbed both kids and gone to the top floor where he was threatening to throw the kids off, then jump himself. I looked up again and now I could see the guy standing at the edge of the railing holding another, smaller child in his arms and screaming incoherently. I looked around and no one was doing anything, so I told my girlfriend to stay put, then I ran up the escalators to the top floor. When i got up there the guy was screaming at everyone to stay away. Not many people were up there, so I eased up to where the guy was and tried to see if it looked like he was serious. He was. He was standing on a bench that was placed against the railing, with one foot on the bench and one on the railing, swaying back and forth. Twice he swung the kid in his arms toward the railing, like he was going to throw him, then brought him back. He started yelling at his wife about how she had taken everything from him and now he was going to take from her. It sounded to me like he was trying to work up the "courage" to jump. I was standing about fifteen feet from him and I called to him and just started telling him that he was right, that his wife was wrong, and that whatever she had done she had obviously wronged him. He looked at me and took a step back, started listening to me. He said that she had taken all his money and now wouldn't let him see his kids. He had nothing left and nothing to live for. Then he turned and started screaming down at her again. He said he was going to hurt her, at which point he swung the kid toward the railing again. I yelled at him that he need to let his kids grow up, that when they were older they would realize that he was right, that their mom had taken them away, and that he was a good dad, but that he needed to let them live to grow up. I told him that if she had stolen his money that he needed to tell the police. He said the cops wouldn't listen to him, that now they would just lock him up. I told him, no, they would listen, he just needed to talk to him. I just figured that if the guy thought that someone understood him, and sided with him, he might wind it down a notch.

I was totally winging it. I just wanted to keep the guy talking, to get his mind off of jumping. He was totally wired, and I was really afraid that he was going to shove those kids over. In the link below you can see a cop walking in front of him. I'm out of sight off to the left. I couldn't see the little dude in the red jacket because the farang was between me and him. I just tried to keep the guy talking, and then the guy in red came up and pulled him away from the railing. You can see me in the white t-shirt and white ball cap. The kids were whisked away to their mom. I later saw them downstairs with their mom, and she thanked me. Several posters have indicated that it was no big deal, that the kids weren't in danger. Trust me, it was a very big deal. And yeah, it took twenty people to hold him down. He may have been on something, but he was very strong. The cops finally got the cuffs on him and led him away. I was shaking like a leaf, lol. Took me several SangSoms to wind down.

Here's a better angle. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1414161595560173

That second clip posted by Loaded gives a better view of what happened. The child he was holding was clearly in distress and if that 'father' was making threats to tip him off the balcony in my humble opinion they were right to respond to that threat. The actual intervention was well executed given the circumstances, that first person turns the child and father away from the balcony and he is then quickly overwhelmed. Fair play to them.