A 31-year-old man, believed to be the acrobat who dangled from Trump Tower in the hope of speaking to the president, is in police custody in Chicago after jumping out of an ambulance and fleeing, only to be located by police a few hours later.
He escaped from the ambulance on Oct. 20 while being transported from Northwestern Memorial Hospital to another medical facility.
During the early evening of Sunday, Oct. 18, the man climbed to the sixteenth floor of the tower and secured himself with a harness and rope. He stayed in position until Monday morning when negotiators safely talked him down. Chicago police reported that the man threatened to kill himself if he did not get a chance to converse with the president.
“I don’t want to die. If someone will try to pull this rope, I will jump and die,” said the man while filming a video of himself during his escapade.
It was reported that the man wielded a knife and threatened to cut his rope.
The man also identified himself as a strong advocate for Black Lives Matter.
Along with his desired presidential conversation, the man had other various social issues that he wanted to discuss with reporters.
Many passersby gathered to watch the man under the impression that the event was actually a rehearsed stunt from the newest Batman movie, which had been filming in the Chicago area prior to the incident. Several Chicago police officers, and even a Russian interpreter, were involved with the negotiation to bring the man down.
Police spokesman, Tom Ahern, said that the negotiation was “resolved peacefully” and that the man agreed to “drop the knife” he was holding.
The man, after hours of negotiation, climbed onto the balcony where he was stormed by a SWAT team and later taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital before his attempted escape.
Police had called off a missing person’s report at 1 a.m. Oct. 21 and said that the man was hospitalized for mental assessment and would face no charges for hanging off of the Trump Tower.
