A man who had riveted the Internet over the past 25 hours after refusing to leave his perch near the top of an 80-foot (24-meter) sequoia in the middle of a downtown shopping district has finally climbed down. After long efforts from police to coax him down, the man climbed to the base of the tree a little before noon Wednesday.
His actions over the past two days had prompted police to close adjacent streets. He had appeared to be agitated, gesturing wildly and yelling intermittently or sometimes throwing apples and branches at officers. His name and cause are known. "Issue appears to be between the man and the tree," the Seattle Police Department had tweeted.
The department's tweet was just part of the online commotion the incident sparked, with new Twitter accounts dedicated to it and the hashtag #ManInTree trending on Twitter and Facebook. A local TV station livestreamed video of the man online as he dozed, shouted and knocked around a stick. Many passers-by, seeming bemused by the man's antics, pulled out their cellphones Wednesday to snap pictures of his silhouette, accentuated by a long, bushy beard, against the gray morning sky.
Police have not said if the man is a member of the city's ballooning homeless population. Mayor Ed Murray declared a state of emergency as deaths of homeless people mounted last fall, and the city has authorized new tent cities and safe parking lots for those living without shelter or in their vehicles.
Efforts by the department's crisis-intervention specialists included trying to speak to him from the ladder of a fire truck and from the sixth-floor windows of the neighboring Macy's department store. After spending the night, he appeared to be comfortably reclining in the upper branches Wednesday morning and sometimes flashed a peace sign. He occasionally loosed an expletive that could be heard below, but otherwise his comments - whether to himself or to the officers in the window - were unintelligible.
After finally climbing down the man sat at the base and appeared to be chomping on a piece of fruit. Police initially kept their distance but soon approached him. They loaded him onto an ambulance on a stretcher.
