Alex Arger
Man arrested for climbing Santa Monica Pier ride claiming to have bomb
The Santa Monica Police Department said they immediately began evacuating the pier and neighboring Pacific Park.
LEARN MOREPosted: 9:13 p.m. EDT Oct 11, 2023
An anti-abortion activist who calls himself "pro-life Spiderman" was arrested Tuesday after climbing a 588-foot building in Chicago's West Loop.
In what police are calling a "publicity stunt," Maison DesChamps livestreamed on Instagram as he scaled the 40-story Accenture Tower without ropes, starting his climb at around 9:45 a.m. local time and ending 67 minutes later.
As he made his ascent, bystanders stopped to watch the risky climb.
Video from one onlooker, Darryl Crater, shows different stages of the 24-year-old scaling the curved building as police waited at its top to arrest him.
DesChamps made the journey as part of a fundraiser for anti-abortion organization Let Them Live.
In an Instagram post, he said the climb was to raise money for a mother who had an abortion scheduled for the upcoming weekend, and on Wednesday morning, he asked for more donations to the cause after saying he was out of jail.
Alicia Hurtado, with the Chicago Abortion Fund, condemned DesChamps' climb and said it's another anti-abortion act, which she said have been on the rise since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year.
"The organization being amplified by this dangerous stunt is the antithesis of reproductive justice, and we instead hope that this moment is used to amplify groups on the ground that are standing up for bodily autonomy for all," Hurtado told the Chicago Sun Times in a statement.
This wasn't the first time DesChamps has scaled a building for his cause, with the act usually ending in arrest. He climbed the former Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix ahead of the February Super Bowl and other large structures in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
He now faces two misdemeanor charges for the Chicago act, according to ABC7: reckless conduct and criminal trespass to land.
