LAS VEGAS (FOX5) -
There's a disturbing new trend of suicides at the Hoover Dam bypass bridge.
Since April, four people have jumped from the O'Callahan-Tillman Bridge, killing themselves.
Monday, police recovered another body below the dam after a woman from Boulder City jumped at about noon.
"Right now what we're really doing is monitoring the situation and seeing what happens," said Michelle Booth, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT).
NDOT is the agency responsible for maintaining the highway. Booth said the agency is concerned with the suicides, but it, along with project partners, did consider the issue before building the bridge, and few solutions were found.
"The study showed that the efforts they've made on bridges in other states have not really been effective. And there's no evidence suggesting that they work," Booth told FOX5.
Many visitors to the area feel that ruining the aesthetics of the bridge by putting in a fence or a net wouldn't be very effective anyway because anyone who wanted to commit suicide would just find ways around those barriers.
"Short of encaging it, I don't know what else you could do," said Kelly Cottrell, who was visiting the bridge from Chickasha, OK.
"I don't think it's something the government can spend money on to stop them from doing because if it's not the bridge, then it's going to be those cliffs," said Casey Miller, visiting from Little Rock, AR.
But others feel more could be done.
"Well, it could be patrolled, maybe, by security guards," suggested Howard Cannatella, who was visiting from England.
Some solutions wouldn't affect aesthetics, such as placing signs and suicide hotline phones, similar to ones found on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Some feel that's worth the cost.
"I don't know if any of those things would stop them, but it might, and you know if it stopped one, it'd probably be worth the money," Cottrell said.
"Obviously you want to do as much as possible that's reasonable," Cannatella said.
Copyright 2012 KVVU (KVVU Broadcasting Corporation). All rights reserved.
Doug Johnson/FOX5
