On a bright autumn day, Renato Grbic was out fishing on the Danube River with his brother when he heard a big splash. At first, he thought somebody had thrown something off the bridge.
Then he saw a man flailing in the water.
“We hurried and pulled the man out,” Grbic said. “I remember telling him: Such a glorious day and you want to kill yourself!”
It was the first time Grbic saved a life. From that day 15 year ago, his own life would never be the same. The bright-eyed, tattooed restaurant owner from a shabby industrial zone on the outskirts of Belgrade has rescued 25 people who tried to kill themselves by jumping off the tall bridge over the Danube.
Always on alert in his little wooden motor boat, the burly 51-year-old has pulled people out of the river’s muddy waters without asking for anything in return.
“I couldn’t turn my back on them,” Grbic said. “They are desperate people.”
Grbic has been dubbed the “Superman of the Danube” by his admirers and awarded a hero’s plaque by Belgrade authorities. However, even “Superman” cannot save everybody who jumps off the 18m high bridge: At least as many as he had saved have killed themselves at the spot since Grbic’s first rescue.
“When I hear that someone has jumped and I wasn’t there I really feel bad,” he said. “My eyes are always on the bridge.”
The Pancevo Bridge became a favored suicide spot because it is Belgrade’s only bridge over the Danube, which is bigger, colder and has stronger underwater currents than the city’s other river, the Sava.
The first person Grbic pulled out turned out to be mental patient. Grbic took him ashore, gave him dry clothes, hot tea and cigarettes. Later, an ambulance came and took the man away.
“That was it,” Grbic said. “He didn’t speak, they never do.”
Over the years, Grbic has rescued men and women of all ages and social backgrounds. Grbic remembers them all, but “they never return or call, they hardly ever say thank you.”
Goran Penev, a researcher with Serbia’s Institute of Social Sciences, said Serbia’s suicide rate is at the upper side of the European average. Penev noted there was a sharp rise in the early 1990s, at the beginning of the wars in the former Yugoslavia, but the situation has been relatively stable ever since.
Last year, nearly 1,300 people in Serbia — a country of 7 million people — took their lives.
Grbic has found that some of the people he rescued suffered from cancer or other terminal illnesses, while others cited poverty or unrequited love. All felt lonely, he said.
“It is a cry for help,” he said. “They often do it in daytime so they would be seen, they want attention, love.”
Only a couple weeks ago, a 22-year-old girl threw herself off the bridge near Grbic’s restaurant. He was there to pick her up and ask: “Why did you do it?”
“For my boyfriend,” she said.
“Do you think he would do it for you?” he asked in return.
Grbic said the girl was conscious and clear-minded when he plucked her out of the water. However, in winter it is a question of minutes before people will lose consciousness in the freezing Danube and drown.
On one of those days, in mid-January about seven years ago, Grbic was just preparing to turn his boat to the shore and go home — when he heard a scream.
An 18-year-old woman going through a mental crisis had burst out of her parents’ car at the bridge, taken off her jacket and jumped, shouting: “Goodbye, Mom!”
Grbic said something had made him stick around: “It was a very windy day, a few minutes later and I would have gone.”
The girl, Grbic said, is the only one who has stayed in touch.
Every January she comes to his fish restaurant to celebrate her “second birthday.” She is married now and has a child. Grbic was invited to the wedding reception.
“My heart leaps every time I see her,” he said.
Grbic has little or no track of the others he saved. It would be nice, he says, if they came to tell him how they were over a brandy at his restaurant.
“I gave them a second chance and it was up to them to use it well,” he said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of