NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — A Newport News police officer is being called a hero after saving a man seconds away from taking his life.

Officer Joanna Wallace was just finishing her shift Sunday night when she got a call about a man on the roof of a parking deck at City Center. She immediately went back to her squad car.

“There was a report of a suicidal subject that we had been looking for earlier that we hadn’t been able to make contact with,” Wallace explained, “the subject had poured gasoline all over himself and he had a lighter in his hand.”

Officer Wallace has spent the past nine years as a hostage negotiator and is trained in crisis intervention. She was briefed by her fellow officers then began talking with the man in distress.

“We talked for about an hour and a half. Really just trying to make a good bond with him. In this specific incident, I was very aware of what could happen at any second with a lighter in his hand. My first thought was trying to get him to trust me and understand that I was trying to help him. I wanted to work through it with him,” Wallace told 10 On Your Side.

Over the course of her career, Wallace tells us she’s responded to hundreds of similar situations.

“Which is why it’s so great the Newport News Police Department puts so much emphasis on training with people with mental illness because it is unfortunately an every day occurrence. I was extremely relieved when he did agree to come with me and I was pretty hyped up about it for a while because it was very worrying to begin with for sure. That was one where I walked away definitely feeling like I had accomplished something,” Wallace stated.

In her four years with the Newport News Police Department, Wallace has gone through 500 hours of negotiation and crisis intervention training.

“We train twice a month, full day of training. We do study a lot of case files from prior negotiations. We’ll watch the negotiation and talk about what went right, what went wrong, what we can do better, what can we do if we encounter this type of situation,” Wallace said.

Wallace tells us a good negotiator must listen and have empathy.

“I care about people. I want to be able to help people when they’re in crisis,” Wallace stated.

The Newport News Police Department has 10 hostage negotiators. They train on how to handle extremist groups and those undergoing a mental health crisis.