Trump Tower Climber

Overview

The Trump Tower Climber is a nickname given to Stephen Rogata, a 20-year-old man who gained notoriety for scaling the glass facade of the Trump Tower, a prominent skyscraper owned by Donald Trump and located in Manhattan, New York City, with a harness, ropes and suction cups, in an effort to gain a “private audience” with the Republican presidential nominee.

Background

At approximately 3:00 p.m. (ET), Stephen Rogata, a 20-year-old resident of Great Falls, Virginia, began climbing the Trump Tower, a 68-story skyscraper located in Midtown Manhattan that serves as the primary residence of Donald Trump and the headquarters of his conglomerate, The Trump Organization, and his 2016 presidential campaign. Upon arriving at the scene after receiving the first 911 call around 3:30 p.m. ^[1], the authorities made several attempts to halt Rogata's ascent by verbal persuasion and interception using a ladder, though none could deter him from climbing. Over the course of the next two hours, Rogata made it to the 21st floor of the building.

Developments

Arrest

At about 6:30 p.m., NYPD Detective Christopher Williams and his partner managed to stop Rogata by pulling him inside through a window they had set up as a point of interception on the 21st floor of the building. Rogata was subsequently taken into police custody and transported to Bellevue Hospital for psychological evaluation, and later, arrested on the charges of criminal trespass and reckless endangerment.^[3]

Online Reaction

Onlookers began to film the climber, and several newscasters documented the climb on the real-time streaming app Periscope. According to the New York Times,^[2] a stream on Facebook from WABC-TV received more than four million views. It was soon revealed that Rogata had released a Youtube video the day before titled "Message to Mr. Trump (why I climbed your tower)," shown below.

The story attracted the fascination of Twitter as well, as the story trended and became a "Twitter moment"^[4] as onlookers and celebrities including Josh Groban, Tyson Beckford, Jordan Spieth, and more tweeted their reactions.^[5] Donald Trump tweeted "Great job today by the NYPD in protecting the people and saving the climber," shown below.

On Reddit, two threads, one providing a link to ABC News' coverage of the climb^[6] and one posting a gif of Rogata being captured,^[7] gained over 5,000 points and thousands of comments.

Search Interest

External References