A French national has been arrested for scaling a 535-feet-tall (163-metre) residential building in Melbourne, Australia, without a harness.
Police have also arrested the man who was filming the 29-year-old climber using a drone.
Officers rushed to the scene after they received a call from emergency services early Monday morning. They found the climber at the top of the 55-storey building at 60 A'Beckett Street.
"It is expected he will be charged with reckless conduct endangering life, reckless conduct endangering serious injury, common law public nuisance and without lawful excuse to enter private property," police said in a statement.
A man is free climbing a building in Melbourne. @3AW693 @RossAndRussel pic.twitter.com/hHzA1HFjNi
— Eddie Summerfield (@eddiesummers) February 5, 2024
Some of the videos from the incident have also been shared on social media platforms. In the videos, the man can be seen trying to scale the building with a backpack but no harness.
A huge crowd of bystanders had gathered while the man was trying to climb the massive building, with most of them hoping he would manage to make it to the top without getting injured.
One of the locals told 3AW: "All the neighbours are out looking out over the balcony, looking up, can't believe [he] has passed their window while they had their Weet-Bix and their Vegemite toast".
"All us construction workers will give him a big cheer once he reaches the top. Hopefully Melbourne's finest will take him in for questioning".
Fortunately, no one received any injuries, and the man was escorted to safety by the police personnel.
In a similarly bizarre incident reported last year, a drunk tourist climbed on a historic statue in Brussels to take a picture, causing damage worth thousands of euros.
The Irish tourist in Belgium was arrested for causing a whopping £14,500 (€17,000) worth of damages to a recently restored statue outside the Brussels Stock Exchange.
The statue, "The hand with a torch", had reopened just one day before the incident after being shut to the public for three long years for restoration. The revamp work for the 150-year-old statue cost around €90 million.
The exterior of the Brussels Stock Exchange, also called the Bourse/Beurs, is decked out with several beautiful statues that were created in the late 19th century by local sculptor Joseph Jacquet and French artist Auguste Rodin.
The statues include two lion figures that guard the entrance to the stock exchange. The drunk tourist damaged one of those lion sculptures. The wrecked statue depicted a lion and a man holding a torch.
