Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Man armed with rake talked down from Crouch End roof
For those of you on Twitter, you'll have caught the story of the man on the roof last night. HoL's Twitter stream was used as the local hub for telling the story locally as it happened. Times journalist, Caitlin Moran, who lives near to Uplands Road where the incident took place, was tweeting the story at us as the story unfolded.
Today Flora Drury at The Hornsey Journal has picked up the story and found out a little more of what it was all about.
A little bit disapoointing to see that Flora has edited her tweets to remove the "'@harrigayonline" that appeared at the start the original tweets she quoted from @caitlinmoran and from @richtard. Ah well par for the course, I guess.
A man armed with a garden rake had to be talked down from his Crouch End roof after he began yelling and throwing tiles down into the gardens below.
The man climbed onto the roof of his three-storey home in Uplands Road at around 9pm last night, where he remained with his garden rake until 1.10am when the fire service finally managed to lower him down to the ground and into a waiting ambulance.
Police - who were called to the road at 9.26pm - spent hours negotiating with the 41-year-old man, who began using the rake to rip up the roof tiles while shouting the same thing repeatedly.
Neighbour Paul McAdam, who described the man as “a bit of a character” who was always singing, said: “He sound very distressed. He was shouting the same thing all the time. It sounded like help or some Italian thing. He was constantly calling - every 20 seconds for a couple of hours.
“It was about one o’clock when I stuck my head out the window and saw them bringing him down. An ambulance had backed right up to where he was.
“He must have been cold, it had been raining for a couple of hours.”
The incident also caused a stir on Twitter - with the police helicopter’s official Twitter account @MPSinthesky tweeting: “23:05 Still over Harringay with this male refusing to come down off a roof.”
Times journalist Caitlin Moran - who lives nearby - tweeted: “He has STAMINA. And a lot of roof tiles that he’s chucking in next door’s garden.”
Meanwhile, @richtard tweeted: “Sure I could vaguely hear it from the other side of Green Lanes, would he sound like an owl from a distance?”
The man - who was taken to the Whittington Hospital to be physically and mentally assessed - has since been discharged from hospital.
Report from Hornsey Journal
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ian on
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Was it really necessary to deploy the police helicopter to this incident – it’s not like the man was going anywhere! Is this not a shocking waste of police recourses?
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Permalink Reply by Malc B on
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From what I read, the guy was a danger to himself and potentially others - if the met thought that deploying the helicopter might stop him from jumping, or whatever else he might do, then tax money well spent as far as I'm concerned. There but for the grace of god etc.
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I applaud the use of police resources to help in this situation, and am glad that a successfully resolution was achieved. My point however was whether a helicopter was the right resource to use for this particular situation.
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Permalink Reply by Paul on
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It was clear to me that the guy was not in a good place on sunday night. It was a long way down, and if he'd slipped or fallen it is unlikely that he would have survived. A lot of resources were deployed, but how much value do you attach to a life? Personally, I was glad that the situation was resolved without injury or loss of life.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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And this is a story because it involved a journalist?
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