Adeel Malik
A Muslim hero taxi driver in the UK desperately clung on to a suicidal customer in the wind and rain for 15 minutes to stop her throwing herself into the freezing cold River Humber.
Ali Asik, 45, had just dropped a young woman off at the Country Park Inn, underneath Humber Bridge in Cliff Road, Hessle, at 2am on Thursday morning, where she said she was staying with a friend as reported by Mail Online.
According to Mr Asik, from Hull, she had been a customer of his before and he thought nothing of it after collecting her from Propaganda in the city centre, saying his own daughters often do the same.
But he realised something was not right when he saw the woman walking towards an alleyway by the side of the building, rather than the entrance, as he began reversing away.
He decided to check on the customer and caught up to her as she rounded a wooden fence and walked onto a concrete platform at the water’s edge.
Mr Asik said: ‘I had left the car in the middle of the road and I just ran and grabbed her.
‘She was pushing me away and telling me to leave her alone, that she didn’t want to be here anymore. Then she fell to her knees, crying and crying.’
Ali had left his phone in the car, so he took the woman’s phone and desperately tried to get in touch with her family.
He eventually had to call 999, having clung to the woman in the freezing wind and rain for 15 minutes in total before the police arrived and led her away.
Mr Asik has since been contacted by the police and the woman’s family to thank him for his actions that night, and was told the woman is now receiving professional help.
But he said he wanted to share his experience with other taxi drivers in the hope that more lives could potentially be saved.
He said: ‘I’m no hero. I just want every driver to take care of their passengers. Just watch them, look out for their body language.’
He noticed the woman had tears in her eyes during the journey and asked her what was wrong, to which she said she had been struggling with illness in the family and the death of a close family member.
When he told her the Country Park Inn would be closed at that time, asking why she wanted to go there, he had accepted her explanation.
Mr Asik said her behaviour during the journey and after he had dropped her off had made him realise something was wrong.
He explained: ‘She was really down. But I would never have thought she might commit suicide.
‘If I had left her there and the next morning seen that a young woman had been found down there I would have had to live with that for the rest of my life.
‘Nowadays you get lots of young people that have these problems and you never know who might be struggling.
‘As drivers you need to make sure they get in the house safe. Look at their body language, check up on them. It might take a couple of minutes from the business, but it could make all the difference.’
Helping and saving lives is considered as a huge act of goodness in the sight of Allah as He said in the Quran 5:32:
And whoever saves one – it is as if he had saved mankind entirely.
May Allah ease the pain of everyone who is struggling in life and never let them take their own life.
