A bare-chested man was arrested Sunday afternoon after he was seen climbing the Eiffel Tower, prompting an evacuation of tourists hours before the Olympic closing ceremony took place.
Witnesses on the ground turned their cameras to the iconic Paris landmark after noticing the man scaling the lattice exterior of the tower. One video captured footage of the man climbing just above the Olympic rings adorning the second section of the monument, just above the first viewing deck. At that point, the climber would have been about 60 metres off the ground, scaling the tower without any ropes or equipment.
Police escorted visitors away from the area around 3 p.m. Some visitors who were briefly locked on the second floor of the 330-metre tower were allowed to exit around 30 minutes later.
The identity of the climber has not been released by police but he appears to be British man, given a cheeky joke he said on camera as he was being led away in handcuffs.
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“Bloody warm, innit?” the blond and bearded climber said as he passed by a witness recording the scene. It was 30 C that day.
“An individual started climbing the Eiffel Tower at 2:45 p.m., police intervened and the person was detained,” a Paris police official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of an ongoing investigation into the incident.
According to an unconfirmed report from the Daily Mail, the man accused of scaling the tower is Louis Davis, a professional climber and stunt co-ordinator. In 2023, Davis was arrested and charged with aggravated trespass after he scaled London’s iconic Cheesegrater building without ropes. He was also shirtless at the time.
The Eiffel Tower was a centrepiece of the opening ceremony, with Celine Dion serenading the city from one of its viewing areas. The tower did not play a role in the closing ceremony, which took place at Stade de France in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis at 9 p.m.
More than 30,000 police officers were deployed around Paris on Sunday. France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said about 3,000 police officers were mobilized around the Stade de France, and 20,000 police troops and other security personnel were stationed in Paris and the Saint-Denis area to ensure safety on the last day of the Olympics.
— with files from The Associated Press
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