A tightrope stunt caught on video high above downtown Los Angeles is under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Benjamin Schneider, 28, known on social media as "Reckless Ben," told NBCLA last week that he was creating an art piece when he walked on a slack-line between the abandoned Oceanwide Plaza high-rise buildings known as Graffiti Towers. Schneider and his team slipped past police assigned to security and into the buildings with a drone camera to capture the stunt about 40 floors up on video.
"I wanted to create the greatest art piece Los Angeles has ever seen," Schneider said.
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He said he entered the buildings Saturday night and performed the stunt Sunday morning about six to seven times. He told NBCLA he thought an arrest was likely.
“The only thing going through my mind when I was walking was pretty much, 'Don’t look down, don’t fall, and die,'” Schneider said. “There’s fire trucks beneath me, there’s police officers, they were just all at the bottom. They didn’t come up and do anything, they were just watching from the bottom I guess.”
NBCLA has reached out to Los Angeles police for more details about the investigation.
Construction stopped on the residential towers in 2019 when the Chinese developer ran out of money. They are now covered in graffiti. Base jumpers also have used the site, located near Crypto.Com Area.
In February, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved more than $1 million to build a fence around the property. LAPD still surrounds the site 24 hours a day.
Over the weekend, an officer near the property was attacked in a patrol SUV that was stolen before the driver crashed at a nearby intersection.
