59°F
weather icon Mostly Cloudy

Man finally leaves tree in downtown Seattle after 25 hours — VIDEO

SEATTLE — Here’s the latest on the Seattle man who spent a day in a tree.

12 p.m.

Seattle’s “Man In Tree” has climbed down.

Twenty-five hours and a live stream later, the man refused to leave his perch near the top of an 80-foot sequoia in the middle of a downtown shopping district.

After long efforts from police to coax him down, the man climbed to the base of the tree a little before noon Wednesday.

He 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.



8:35 a.m.

Hundreds of people have paused on their way to work to check out the man refusing to leave his perch near the top of an 80-foot sequoia tree in downtown Seattle. Many pulled out their phones to take a photo of his silhouette against the gray, drizzling sky and marveled that he was still there nearly a full day after climbing up.

The man spent much of the morning reclining quietly in the upper branches, but he resumed gesticulating wildly and shouting when two police officers tried to talk to him from sixth-floor windows of the Macy’s department store building next door.

Local chef Michelle Matsko gazed up at the man from underneath her red umbrella and wondered if he was trying to make a statement. She called his endurance impressive. Another woman, Janice Wilson, repeatedly yelled to him: “We love you! Come down safely!”

7:40 a.m.

Despite hours of police coaxing, a man refused to leave his perch near the top of an 80-foot tall sequoia tree in downtown Seattle Wednesday morning.

Authorities were alerted to the unidentified man in the tree around 11 a.m. Tuesday and he was still clinging to its branches at 7 a.m. Wednesday, more than 20 hours later.

“Issue appears to be between the man and the tree,” Seattle police 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.

The man’s treetop sitting has also attracted onlookers on the street below and a local TV station livestreamed video of the man online as he dozed, shouted and knocked around a stick. The reporter and cameraman could be heard repeatedly telling passers-by that the man was indeed still in the tree.

MOST READ
Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook.
THE LATEST
What travelers can expect as Southwest Airlines introduces assigned seats

Southwest Airlines passengers made their final boarding-time scrambles for seats on Monday as the carrier prepared to end the open-seating system that distinguished it from other airlines for more than a half‑century.

 
Videos of deadly Minneapolis shooting contradict government statements

Leaders of law enforcement organizations expressed alarm Sunday over the latest deadly shooting by federal officers in Minneapolis while use-of-force experts criticized the Trump administration’s justification of the killing, saying bystander footage contradicted its narrative of what prompted it.

MORE STORIES