An unusual incident occurred in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Wednesday. A woman scaled a high-voltage transformer and briefly left over 800 homes without power before authorities managed to talk her down. Reports from local news station ABC4 indicate that the dramatic scene occurred near Gladiola Street and Decade Drive, where there were strong power disruptions.
The woman was seen atop industrial equipment, hugging one of the long cylindrical insulators, which were fitted with high-voltage parts. A video that is going viral on social media shows her in a precarious situation as seen in an image with a visual of her hanging horizontally from the structure.
Emergency personnel quickly made it to the scene, and two utility bucket lift operators were gazing closely at the precarious scene. The police were soon on the scene and began deploying cherry pickers to try and rescue her. Things quickly went south when the woman began kicking at the rescue gear and was even climbing up a wire like a vine to get away from being rescued.
Watch the video here:
Over 800 Utah homes lost power after a woman climbed the transformer pic.twitter.com/E895Rw4DSf
— Visual feast (@visualfeastwang) November 15, 2024
Escalation And Use Of Force
When it was clarified that the situation was getting hard, an officer threatened to unleash force on the woman if she would not board the cherry picker. In trying to make her fall down so she could be subdued, the officer fired a less-lethal weapon, which reportedly hit the woman. Witness Kent explains how she saw the woman fall into pain but slowly taken down into the cherry picker and to safety:. She didn’t lose consciousness or remained unconscious, and could cry with pain yet still talk.
Concerns For Her Welfare
The ambulance was summoned and took the woman away on a stretcher. Concerned about her condition at every point during the ordeal, Kent said, “We were kind of worried about her.” He also said he was more than relieved when she was brought safely down.
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