Dr. Chelsea Van Thof still remembers that night in mid-April, standing on the Duke Ellington Bridge in Adams Morgan. Through the gates that line the bridge, she could see the police lights some 130 feet below in Rock Creek Park, and she had a terrified feeling that was where she would find her long-term partner, Dr. Peter Tripp.

Tripp had left their Woodley Park apartment earlier that night, only to send her an alarming text in what became the last message they ever shared. She rushed out of bed, called a friend and the police, and set out in a frantic search for him.

“What I was thinking was this is a cry for help. No one does this on the first try. Peter’s never shown any sort of struggle with depression or thoughts of harming himself. We’re going to get him help. And whether or not that would have saved his life, I’ll never know,” she says.

Before Van Thof or police could find him, Tripp died by suicide at the William Howard Taft Bridge, the 115-year-old span that carries Connecticut Avenue across Rock Creek Park. He was 29. And it was only in the aftermath that Van Thof realized that the gates on the nearby Ellington Bridge from which she had seen the police lights serve a purpose — to stop people from jumping.

“Since I looked through the suicide barrier on the Ellington, I was infuriated that there wasn’t one on the Taft, an identical bridge in height and size,” she says. “I told my friend who was there under the bridge with me that night, ‘You know, I’m going to get a barrier on that bridge and I’m going to try for the rest of my life to do so.'”

‘It looked like everything just rolled off his back’

Van Thof, 31, and Tripp met in veterinary school outside Boston, and what started as a friendship developed slowly into a romantic relationship. They moved to Oregon together to work at an animal hospital before coming to D.C. in 2020 so she could pursue a federal government fellowship. Tripp landed a job at District Veterinary Hospital in Brookland.

Van Thof says there was little outward indication that Tripp was struggling; she says he actually helped her through some of her own mental health challenges. “Peter was the sort that you could go to him with your problems. And it looked like everything just rolled off his back. Nothing bothered him,” she says.

It was the night of his death — and the text message he sent her — that made her realize the depth of his despair, one she says is shared by many fellow veterinarians.

“He had never told me how much impostor syndrome he had, which is very common in not only veterinarians, but PhDs as well. Just feeling like you’re not competent enough for the position you’re trusted with doing. And he said, ‘I never understood why you loved me. I just knew that I loved you,'” she says.

In the wake of Tripp’s death, Van Thof began reading about suicide barriers on bridges, and how many attempts at suicide are impulsive acts that can be stopped.

“It could have saved his life that night and it could have given me and his family more time. Even if he had walked there and was like, ‘Oh, maybe I can scale it.’ And then he didn’t. Maybe I could have, in that time, gotten to him,” she says.

A fight over Ellington Bridge

It was much the same thinking that had spurred D.C. officials into action almost 40 years ago, when a rash of suicides from the Ellington Bridge prompted them to install the barriers that exist to this day.

From 1979 to 1985 there were 24 deaths by suicides from the bridge, representing half of all the attempts from bridges across the city. In a single 10-day span in 1985, three people jumped from the 825-foot-long bridge that connects Adams Morgan to Woodley Park along Calvert Street NW. A lobbying effort led by a State Department official who lost his daughter to suicide prompted then-mayor Marion Barry to install eight-foot-high barriers along the bridge.

The installation stopped and restarted amidst protests and lawsuits from some residents, businesses, and historic preservation groups who said it would negatively impact the sweeping views over Rock Creek Park, and arguments that better alternatives could be found, like call boxes connected to 24-hour suicide prevention hotlines.

“Life is more important than esthetics,” responded Barry at the time.

But even the mayor flip-flopped under pressure, attempting to remove the barriers years later ahead of a re-election campaign. (He was stopped by Congress.) But the pressure from opponents of the Ellington Bridge’s barriers worked to stop nascent efforts to place the same barriers along the nearby Taft Bridge, even as the number of suicide attempts along the Ellington Bridge decreased dramatically after the barriers went up.

One of the opponents of the barriers at the time was Phil Mendelson, then an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner. “Passive restraints do not deal with a person’s mental health. The city would be better to put its money into programs,” he told The Washington Post in 1990. Earlier this week, Van Thof asked Mendelson, who now serves as chairman of the D.C. Council, about his past opposition to the barriers.

“The evidence wasn’t there to say this was an effective way to prevent suicide,” he responded.

‘It decreases the rate of suicide’

But experts say there’s more than enough evidence now to show that barriers on bridges are an effective deterrent.

“There’s a definite drop off, and it’s substantial,” says Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman, who leads research efforts at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, on the number of suicides when barriers are installed. “And it doesn’t shift [suicides] to other places, and the suicide rate in that area stays down. So it decreases the rate of suicide. And it’s longstanding.”

That has been backed up by bridge barrier studies from Maine to England and Canada; Harkavy-Friedman says she’s even seen cases where temporary construction on bridges led to decreases in people jumping. She also says that research disputes claims that if a barrier is placed on one bridge, people will simply travel to another.

“People in a suicidal crisis, their thinking is much less flexible,” she says. “They lack the same problem-solving skills that they might have when they’re not in that crisis situation. So actually thinking of an alternative doesn’t work very well for them, which is a plus. It’s life saving.”

Van Thof says she’s confident a barrier on the Taft Bridge could have stopped Tripp, and it can stop others. “I’m not arguing that putting a barrier there is going to save every single life. But I am arguing that it will save their life that night,” she says.

And as she consumed more of the research on barriers, she became convinced that she’d fight to get them installed on the Taft. “The only thing I found comforting in losing him is advocacy,” she says. “It’s a very unique flavor of grief.”

‘This is a sensible thing to do’

Through the cohort at her State Department fellowship she was eventually connected to Janell Pagats, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in Woodley Park. In June, the ANC 3C unanimously approved a resolution calling for barriers to be installed on the Taft Bridge and the Connecticut Avenue Bridge that crosses Klingle Valley to the north. The resolution cited data from the D.C. Medical Examiner showing that over the last 12 years there had been 13 suicides on the Taft Bridge, equating to half of all bridge-related suicides in the District over that time.

This month an ANC in Adams Morgan followed suit. During a brief discussion about the barriers, ANC Commissioner Howard Bauleke recalled the fight over the Ellington Bridge’s barriers.

“I was here way back when they put the fences on the Ellington Bridge, and that was the subject of a lot of local angst. But once people saw that they made a difference that quieted down pretty quickly. This is a sensible thing to do. These are beautiful structures, but they were designed by human beings to serve human purposes, and if by doing this we can save some human lives that would otherwise be lost, I think it’s worth it for that reason alone,” he said.

A spokeswoman for D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) says she supports the barriers, calling them a “worthy goal.”

There is still a process to come, however. Beyond funding from the city, any such barriers would need to be approved by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts. (The bridge crosses Rock Creek Park, which is a federal jurisdiction, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.) And while historic preservation objections could still be lodged, at least one group that fought the barriers on the Ellington Bridge almost 40 years ago said it wouldn’t do the same now.

“As a general principle, the National Trust for Historic Preservation does not oppose the addition of suicide-prevention barriers on historic bridges. We do believe that any proposed modification of historic structures should be conducted in compliance with any applicable historic preservation requirements. Projects that are implemented in this manner have the potential to protect human life, while preserving the most significant features of these historic sites,” said Elliot Carter, a spokesman for the group, in an email.

As for Mendelson, he told Van Thof this week that he wouldn’t oppose barriers on the Taft Bridge. Still, getting them built will still require jumping through a number of bureaucratic hoops — and possibly convincing D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

In a statement, Everett Lott, director of the D.C. Department of Transportation, cited the extensive process that would be needed to install the barriers.

“Due to the historic nature of the William Howard Taft Bridge, extensive coordination is required with National Capital Planning Committee, National Park Service, D.C. State Historic Preservation Office, and the Commission on Fine Arts regarding any modification to the bridge including placing barriers or fencing. Presently, there are no plans to install suicide barriers on this bridge,” he said.

Barriers are becoming more common elsewhere, and Harkavy-Friedman says some places now require them. Construction of suicide barriers on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is expected to be completed next year; more than 1,800 deaths have been linked to the famous span. The Washington Post reported this week that there have been similar calls for barriers on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Last year, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Virginia) introduced legislation to create a stream of federal funding for barriers on bridges across the country.

As she continues advocating for barriers on the Taft Bridge, Van Thof has also printed up stickers that say “Don’t Jump” and have a QR code that directs people to the website she created in Tripp’s memory. She’s slowly hoping to put them up around the bridge. Van Thof says the advocacy is both comforting and draining, and worries that if she wins the fight, the grief will overwhelm her. But she adds that she won’t stop pushing yet.

“The barrier is an effort that I will be fighting for until my time comes,” she says.