SEATTLE — Chef Michelle Matsko paused as she walked to work Wednesday, gazed up from beneath her red umbrella and marveled: After a full day, a man still was perched near the top of an 80-foot-tall sequoia tree in the middle of a shopping district in downtown Seattle.
“I’m really impressed,” she said. “It’s been raining. He’s a trouper.”
The unidentified man finally climbed down safely just before noon, having transfixed the city and the Internet for 25 hours while police closed adjacent streets and tried to coax him down.
As onlookers cheered and chanted “Man In Tree” — in deference to the Twitter hashtag by which he became known — he sat down near the base of the conifer and appeared to be chomping on a piece of fruit.
Officers initially kept their distance but soon approached the man, got him on a gurney and took him for a medical evaluation.
Reasons for the drama remained unclear. At times, the man appeared agitated, gestured wildly, yelled and threw apples and branches at officers. Police tried to speak with him from a firetruck ladder and the sixth-floor windows of the Macy’s department store next door.
Officials have not said if the man is a member of the city’s ballooning homeless population.
Police said they know who the man is but did not release his identity.
“We are now working with him trying to get a clearer picture of what exactly led to this point,” said Detective Patrick Michaud. “We’ll be able to work with him as he is in the hospital try to get this whole thing figured out.”