Teen survives Golden Gate Bridge jump

SAN FRANCISCO, March 11 (UPI) -- A teenager jumped off San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge but was rescued by a surfer, California authorities said.

California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Rardin told the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday's incident is being investigated as an attempted suicide, but one fellow student said, "He did it to try to look cool. He said he'd jumped off bridges before."

The 17-year-old junior at Windsor High School in Sonoma County was on a field trip with his class.

He was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, but the Windsor Unified School District said he suffered only bruising and tenderness.

Frederic Lecouturier, 55, said he was surfing under the bridge when he saw the boy drop. "I thought, 'Well, he's going to die,'" he said, "and then it was a miracle when he popped up alive. I paddled out there, and he told me he jumped 'for kicks.' There was a stiff wind coming out of the south, and I think that broke his fall and helped save him."

The spot the student leaped from is more than 200 feet above the water, and 99 percent of the more than 1,500 people who have jumped from the bridge have died.