Man arrested after parachuting from top of Eiffel Tower
A man has been arrested in Paris after jumping off the Eiffel Tower with a parachute and landing in a nearby stadium.
The arrest took place just three days after security guards found two American tourists sleeping off a night of heavy drinking in the heights of Paris’s most visited landmark, after dodging security the night before.
In the latest illegal incident, an experienced climber who was not named entered the tower’s perimeter shortly after 5am on Thursday, well before its official opening.
Spotted by guards, according to the site’s operator, Sete, he nevertheless managed to clamber to the top before anybody could stop him, carrying the parachute in a backpack.
Once near the top of the tower, which is 330 metres (1083 feet) tall, he jumped and landed nearby, where he was arrested for “endangering the lives of others”, said police.
“This kind of irresponsible action puts people working at or below the tower in danger,” Sete said in a statement.
Drunk sleepers ‘got stuck’
The Eiffel Tower is the French capital’s top tourist destination and attracted 5.9 million visitors in 2022.
The tower’s opening, usually at 9am, was slightly delayed because of the incident, Sete said, adding that it had filed criminal charges against the man.
On Tuesday, the monument’s operator said its security guards had roused two American tourists “in the early morning” as they were making their rounds before opening time on Monday.
Paris prosecutors said they “appear to have got stuck because of how drunk they were”.
The inebriated pair slept the night in a spot normally closed to the public between the tower’s second and third levels, but “did not pose any apparent threat”, said Sete.
After paying for an entry ticket around 10.40 pm on Sunday, the pair hopped security barriers while climbing down the stairs from the tower’s top, said a police source.
Firefighters, including a specialist unit for recovering people from dangerous heights, were sent to recover the interlopers, the police source added.
Several bomb threats
It has been a busy few days for the tower’s security.
On Saturday, two bomb threats forced the evacuation of the Iron Lady, as the landmark is sometimes dubbed, and police are now investigating the incident.
A further email with a bomb threat was sent to three Paris police stations on Monday, but police advised against evacuating it.
