By Laurel J. Sweet
The Boston Herald
BOSTON — A car salesman bent on suicide and resisting efforts to save him on the roof of a Northeastern University art gallery took his pound of flesh from a hero campus cop, chomping down hard on the officer’s left arm, police said.
“A large human bite” was imprinted on the long arm of the lawman Tuesday by the 25-year-old man, according to a Boston police report.
The would-be jumper, whose name investigators declined to release because he threatened to kill himself, will be summoned to court, likely on a charge of assault and battery on an officer, police said.
The man, armed with a box cutter and clutching a cell phone, was found shortly after 11:10 p.m. Tuesday in the pouring rain on the roof of the school’s four-story Afro-American Artists in Residence Program on Atherton Street in Jamaica Plain.
After a “violent struggle,” the NU officer and a Boston patrolman, who hurt his shoulder, subdued the man with the help of two firefighters.
“Officers encounter many hazards in the course of their daily interactions with the public. We are thankful that they were able to save the life of this distraught individual, despite suffering the injuries they did,” police Capt. John Greland said.
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