Video evidence has emerged of a Columbia Police officer talking a South Carolina shirt on the verge of suicide Friday.

A body-worn camera shows Master Patrol Officer Michael Blackmore talking the man out of jumping off a bridge into traffic. Blackmore and two other officers, along with two EMS workers, responded to an incident reported at 3:45 a.m. last Friday and found the man at the 3600 block of Farrow Road crying and dangling on the guardrail overlooking S.C. 277, according to The Slate.

The rescue told the officer he was tired of living, but the 35-year-old wouldn’t accept that.

“I have bad nights, too, sometimes,” Blackmore told him.

The officer spoke with the rescue about his football interests before talking him off of the guardrail.

“I just wanted to get his mind off of what was bothering him,” Blackmore told The State in an interview Thursday.

He discovered that the man was a fan of the Washington Redskins and South Carolina Gamecocks, which helped him find common ground with the rescue.

“You’re just having a bad night tonight,” Blackmore told him. “But tomorrow night, when you’re sitting around and you’re watching the Gamecocks – or on Sunday when you’re watching the Redskins play or whatever – you’ll look back (like), ‘Man, what was I thinking Friday night?’ You’re just having a bad night.”

Blackmore was able to grab the man’s wrists while his two fellow officers — Charles Browder and Jessica Nolan — lifted him over the railing to safety. He reassured the rescue that he wasn’t in trouble or going to jail and was instead taken into an ambulance to Palmetto Health Richland hospital with EMS workers, according to the incident report.

This wasn’t the first instance in which the officer stopped a suicide attempt. Last month, Blackmore talked a man out of jumping from a parking garage on Main Street. Browder — who is in training with the police department — was also on the scene for that incident.

“It was pretty much the same exact thing,” Blackmore said. “I ended up talking to the guy about football. He told me he was a Notre Dame fan.”