Claim:
On April 24, 2018, Michigan State Police enlisted the help of semi-truck drivers to line up under a Detroit-area highway overpass to help prevent a woman from jumping to her death from the bridge above.
Rating:
What’s True
On April 24, 2018, 911 callers alerted police to a man potentially contemplating jumping from an overpass above Interstate 696 in a Detroit suburb. Michigan State Police then closed off both directions of I-696 and directed truckers to park under the overpass, reducing the possible distance the man could fall until he chose to step back from the edge. However …
What’s False
… Some social media users’ posts circulating in October 2025 featured a copied-and-pasted story containing dramatized text resembling tales generated with an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool that wrongly claimed the person on the bridge was a woman. Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Mike Shaw, a person named in the story, told Snopes by email the individual involved was a man. He also said that the posts’ version of the story was “a bit exaggerated” and pointed out that a quote attributed to him was fabricated.
A rumor that circulated online in October 2025 claimed that on April 24, 2018, Michigan State Police enlisted the help of semi-truck drivers to line up under a Detroit-area highway overpass to help prevent a woman from jumping to her death from the bridge above.
For example, on Oct. 14, a Facebook user posted (archived) a picture showing multiple trucks lined up under an overpass at night.
(What Did I Just See?/Facebook)
The post, which received nearly 100,000 total engagements, featured a 16-paragraph story beginning as follows:
Thirteen truckers got a call at 1 a.m.: “Park your trucks under a bridge and don’t move.” They didn’t ask why. They just came.
It was after midnight on April 24, 2018, when Michigan State Police received a call that stopped Lt. Mike Shaw’s heart: a woman was standing on the edge of a bridge over Interstate 696 in Detroit, contemplating the unthinkable.
The freeway below was dark. The drop was fatal. And Shaw had minutes to make a decision.
He grabbed his radio and did something that had never been done before.
He called the truckers.
Within minutes, headlights pierced the darkness. One by one, thirteen semi-trucks rolled into position across every lane of the highway, parking side by side, forming a wall of steel and hope beneath the bridge.
Three days later, another Facebook user posted (archived) the same story with a photo displaying a red circle around a figure dressed in white, presumably the person contemplating jumping from the bridge.
(Motivational Funny/Facebook)
Many other users shared this same story on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and TikTok (archived). One TikTok photo post (archived) that received over 11 million views featured comments including information from two of the alleged truck drivers. Those stories appear later in this article.
Snopes readers also searched our website for information about whether this story was true.
In short, 1st Lt. Mike Shaw, a public information officer for Michigan State Police, confirmed over email that the story was generally accurate. Specifically, Shaw confirmed that troopers truly enlisted the assistance of truck drivers to help prevent a person’s potential suicide attempt on April 24, 2018.
Regarding the copied-and-pasted story, which contained dramatized text resembling tales generated with an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool, Shaw said the person on the bridge was a man, not a woman. He also said that the posts’ version of the incident was “a bit exaggerated” and included a fabricated quote attributed to him, namely, “They didn’t do it for recognition. They didn’t do it for thanks. They did it because it was the right thing to do.”
In other words, the posts’ recounting of the story was mostly true but still featured inaccuracies. As a result, we’ve rated the claim mostly true.
News media outlets’ articles from April 2018 reported the man peacefully walked away from the bridge after about three hours.
A post (archived) dated the morning of the incident from an official Michigan State Police X account was evidence that the photo of the trucks lined up under the bridge was genuine. The picture displayed a mosaic effect to censor the man on the bridge, appearing just above the green sign on the right side of the frame.
A different X user’s post (archived), appearing hours prior to the Michigan State Police account’s post, showed the same picture without the mosaic effect covering the man. We contacted that user and will update this article if we receive further information.
The man on the bridge
Hours after the incident ended without the man jumping from the bridge, CNN reported firsthand information from Shaw. In his correspondence with Snopes, Shaw confirmed the accuracy of the article and the authenticity of the quotes bearing his name.
Around 1 a.m. on April 24, 2018, 911 callers alerted police to a man potentially contemplating jumping from an overpass above Interstate 696 in the Detroit suburb of Huntington Woods. The CNN article, citing Shaw, said troopers closed off both directions of I-696 and asked for truckers’ help in case the man jumped or accidentally fell.
Shaw told CNN it wasn’t unusual to ask truckers to help in similar cases, but that “most of the time these events are (resolved) pretty fast, so we only get one semi.”
The article read, in part:
Troopers looked for big rigs exiting the highway and asked them to drive ahead instead and park beneath the overpass. The 13 trucks packed in tightly to minimize the gaps between them.
Should the man have fallen, Shaw said, it would have been only five or six feet onto the roof of a truck, rather than 14 feet to the concrete below.
Police ended up talking the man down, he said.
“Usually when we talk to people that are involved in these type of incidents,” Shaw said, “usually there’s a trigger. We try to find out what that trigger is and rectify it.”
“We were able to do that with him today,” he said. “We were able to convince him that this was not the right thing to do, and we were able to get him to a local hospital where he is getting the help that he needs.”
Shaw further said, “In that picture somewhere is somebody that was contemplating ending their own life,” adding, “We want that to be the story – not what Michigan State Police did or what the truckers did, but that the person changed their own mind.”
Fox 2 Detroit reported further photos from the early-morning scene, as well as additional details about the man and the officers involved.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health, suicide or substance use crisis, or emotional distress, reach out 24/7 to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting 988 or using chat services at 988lifeline.org to connect to a trained crisis counselor.
