A daredevil 'freeclimber' was caught scaling the Shard at dawn today and appears to have got right to the top without any safety harness.
Police rushed to the 1,017ft skyscraper overlooking London Bridge at 5.15am with witnesses claiming he managed to get to the 95th and final floor unchallenged.
Scotland Yard has said that they managed to get him inside - but confirmed he was not arrested and was released.
Footage taken from below western Europe's tallest building shows the climber near the top as crowds gathered below and were heard gasping as he climbed without any ropes.
David Kevin Williams tweeted video from the ground and said: 'The guy’s got to the top and is being spoken to by the police'.
Someone is climbing up The Shard!!! ? pic.twitter.com/4yWG0CZ6Rt
— David Kevin Williams (@DaveKWilliams) July 8, 2019
Another witness who watched the drama unfold wrote: 'One person climbing up the outside of the Shard in central London. Two police cars, two ambulances and a drone on the scene'.
The incident raises questions about how the man was able to dodge security and scale one of Britain's most high-profile building unhindered.
A Met spokesman said ‘Police were called at 5.15am following reports of a "freeclimber" on the Shard.
‘Emergency services attended and the man went inside the building where he was spoken to by officers. He was not arrested'.
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The Shard is one of London's most popular tourist attractions and took three years to build before being opened to the public in July 2012.
The 95-floor skyscraper, which looks like a shard of glass and is owned by the tiny but super-rich Gulf state of Qatar, has 72 habitable floors with a viewing deck 801ft up the 1,017ft building.
It is also home to several offices, restaurants, a shopping centre and a luxury hotel with views across most of London.
Previous climbers who have set their sights on the 310-metre (1,017ft) building include YouTuber CassOnline, who climbed from the public viewing platform to the apex in 2017.
In 2013, a group of Greenpeace activists also scaled the building to protest against oil drilling in the Arctic.
The previous year, The Shard secured a High Court injunction against Alain Robert, the climber nicknamed the French Spiderman, to stop him attempting to scale the building.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
