Dried blood was still on the pavement underneath the 23-foot retaining wall from the WSU student who had fallen the previous night.

Almost every bone in his face was broken, and police officers Heidi Lambley and Chris Engle said when they responded to the call, the situation was bad – they thought the young man was going to die.

But he didn’t.

If he had died, it would have been the second student death within a few years from a alcohol-related fall.

In 2009, a 21-year-old WSU student fell off a 40-foot cliff and died. It was later discovered that alcohol was a contributing factor in his fall.

“To think it can happen twice in my career here — it’s hard,” Lambley said.

When The Daily Evergreen arrived at the Pullman police station for a citizen ridealong on Saturday, the night following the fall, Lambley and Engle requested a message be sent out on the newspaper’s Twitter feed. They wanted to ask everyone to have a safe night and to take care of themselves and their friends.

“My question is where were his friends?” Engle said in the begining of his patrol as he drove through College Hill past the street where the young man had fallen. “Why wasn’t anyone looking out for him?”

In a previous interview, Steve Hanson from the WSU Police Department said many students have a misperception of the police departments in Pullman.

"People think we hide in bushes to try and make arrests," he said. "We don't need to do that. They come to us."

Often times when an individual is by himself and is staggering or otherwise appears to be intoxicated, Lambley and Engle stop them, and ask a series of questions to judge their level of drunkenness: The year it is, the city they’re in, their name and who is the current president.

Then they ask if they have a friend who can come get them and make sure they make it home.

“People get mad at us when we stop people who appear to be highly intoxicated,” Engle said, “but we are trying to prevent this exact thing from happening.”

Later that night during the ridealong, Lambley asked a confused-looking individual in Adams Mall if he was doing all right. He said he was, but when asked his current location, he said he was in Providence Court.

Engle and Lambley stopped, and began to ask him more questions in order to determine whether he was okay to be left alone. He was, but Lambley asked him to call a friend to come make sure he gets home all right.

In addition to stopping people who look extremely intoxicated, Lambley and Engle also said they stop people with open containers of alcohol. In 2007, the Pullman City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting an open container in public places like sidewalks and streets.

In 2010, 29 open container infractions were issued. The first open container infraction has a fine of $250 and the second violation is $500.

Saturday night, Lambley gave a warning to the first individual she stopped with an open beer, a young man whose ID showed he was older than 21. She poured out the beer, crushed the can and requested that he dispose of it in a recycling bin.

Across the street, Engle simultaneously stopped another young man who was walking on the sidewalk with an open Four Loko can. He admitted he was younger than 21, and instead of an open container infraction, he was arrested for MIP.

He was Engle and Lambley’s only MIP arrest that night; however, three other individual’s were given open container infractions.

The night before, in addition to the fall, was busy with a DUI and multiple fights, Lambley said.

“I just want everyone to get along,” she said.

Right before midnight, Engle and Lambley got a call for a citizen dispute.

To read the second part of this series click here.

Check out our Twitter @DailyEvergreen for Saturday night’s tweets.