A man scaled the side of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan on Thursday morning with what looked like suction cups and a climbing harness, drawing hundreds of onlookers and prompting a significant police response.
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Witnesses say he appears to be using suction cups to climb the side of the building, according to WPIX.
The man’s ascent up Trump Tower even featured a harrowing moment where police broke glass in the building in an attempt to intercept the climber.
Police have broken out glass and ridden on a window washing platform in their attempts to catch him.
For a long time, the climber played a slow-motion cat-and-mouse game with would-be rescuers.
Twitter users posted photos and videos of a man who started scaling Trump Tower in Manhattan Wednesday afternoon.
The climber said he would get his contact information to the Trump campaign and then asked viewers to help make the YouTube clip go viral.
Parts of the building, including the terraces, are open to the public during the day.
In the video, the man said that he was an “independent researcher” who was climbing Trump Tower to “seek an audience with Mr. Trump”.
The Trump campaign has not issued a statement on the climber. The video has been re-uploaded several times over the course of the past few hours by news outlets and other YouTubers who have been following the story live. The climber was pulled inside the building around 6:30 p.m. ET.
A crowd formed late this afternoon in New York City to take in the freakish sight of a would-be Spider-Man scaling Manhattan’s Trump Tower using the magic of suction cups. “To clear things up, this is NOT me trying to scale the Trump Tower in NYC”, wrote the actor. “I guarantee that it’s in your interest to honor this request”, he said. He climber thought conventional means wouldn’t have worked at getting Trump’s attention.
The 20-year-old from Virginia was arrested and taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychological evaluation, according to a law enforcement official.
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“He wanted to climb to the top so he could speak with Trump”, said Chief Vincent Giordano.
