On a warm September day, Devonte Cafferkey, 13, Sammy Farah, 14, and Shawn Young, 12, were on their way home from school together when they came upon a very disturbing sight. While many children their age would have run away in fear, these boys decided to bravely take action.

The three boys saw a man standing at the edge of an overpass looking very upset. When they saw a rope around the man’s neck, they realized he was preparing to commit suicide.

Devonte, Sammy and Shawn tried to talk the man out of it, but he would not be talked down. Suddenly, the man jumped, but the boys grabbed on to him so that he wouldn’t actually fall.

Joanne Stammers, 47, happened to be walking by when Shawn was calling 911, and she helped the boys hold onto the man until police arrived. After officers learned what the boys had done, they decided to give them an award to officially recognize them as heroes!

Shawn’s mother Carol said she is proud of her son and his friends for being so brave, saying she is stunned that they have “just got on with it” since it all happened.

“They were coming from school and loitering around, Shawn was telling them to hurry up,” said Carol. “If they had been messing around a bit longer, who knows what they would have come and met instead?”

“I feel like they were meant to be there to help him,” she continued. “Shawn told me what happened when he came home. I let him finish the whole story and the whole way through I was smiling because there was nothing I could add to it. While trying to keep the man back and talk him out of suicide, he passed the boys his mobile phone saying ‘if it rings, don’t answer it’.”

“I am extremely proud of all three of them, they are all good boys and it’s nice that they are getting recognised for doing something good in the community,” she said. “Quite often in the national news, there are a lot of negative reports about young people so it is nice to have something positive. They are very young and I marvel at how they are all dealing with it.”

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