Traffic through Hollywood was back to normal Thursday after a 55-year-old homeless man climbed a television station’s decorative tower and refused to come down for about three hours.
No one was injured, but the tower-climbing individual was taken from the site for a mental evaluation.
The spectacle of concerned firefighters, police and other authorities along with the closure of Sunset Boulevard brought evening rush-hour traffic to a halt Wednesday.
Police and firefighters responded about 4:45 p.m. to the 162-foot KTLA tower at the intersection of Sunset and Bronson Avenue, just west of the Hollywood (101) Freeway, according to Officer Ricardo Hernandez of the Los Angeles Police Department‘s Media Relations Office.
Firefighters set up three air cushions beneath the tower where the man was perched about halfway up the structure.
A stretch of Sunset was closed as police crisis negotiators worked to resolve the situation, which ended about 7:45 p.m. when the man climbed down and was taken into custody.
A woman from the man’s church spoke with him and helped coax him down, Hernandez said.
He was facing no criminal charges, but was taken to the LAPD’s Hollywood Station to be examined by the police Mental Evaluation Unit, Hernandez said.
There was no immediate explanation how the man — who was not a KTLA employee — was able to get onto the station’s gated and secured lot and onto the tower, which is behind a fence.
What was once a radio transmitting tower was built in 1925 for radio station KFWB-AM (980), whose studios were on the site. It has displayed KTLA’s call letters since 1955, when the television station moved to what is now known as the Sunset Bronson Studios lot, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The tower was dismantled in 2014, refurbished and reassembled in its current location in 2015. The non-operative tower displays KTLA’s call letters.
–City News Service