TORONTO — Rob Wonfor worked his way up the slanted steel beams of the construction crane. After an hour or so, he had climbed high enough to meet the young woman in a jean jacket, whose mysterious appearance on the crane early Wednesday morning had snarled rush-hour traffic in downtown Toronto and attracted a crowd of onlookers.
She sat on a plank atop the hook, 45 metres above a construction pit that had rebar jutting out like spikes. Wonfor, an acting captain with the Toronto fire department, was on the shaft of the crane. The hook hung from wires, well out of his reach. But he could talk to her.
“I’ve got a hockey game at 8:15,” Wonfor told her.
“What time is it?” she asked, calmly.
“I got no idea. But the sun’s coming up so we gotta get going here.”
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A police negotiator, also on the shaft of the crane, called out to the woman in what Wonfor described as a soothing “Perry Como” voice: “It won’t be much longer now.”
Wonfor looked over at the woman. He was about three-quarters up the crane. When he reached the top, he was going to rappel down to her, fit her with a harness, then continue lowering them both to the ground.
“It might be a bit longer,” he said. “Did it take you this long?”
“No,” he recalled her saying.
“How did you do it?” he asked her. “Because if you have any speed tips, I’ll take them right now.”
The woman, who was later identified as 23-year-old Marisa Lazo, wasn’t wearing gloves or climbing gear — just the light jacket and black boots with heels. The understanding among emergency personnel, he said, was that she had climbed roughly 60 metres to the top of the crane, then slid 15 metres down a greasy wire to land on the hook. The question was, why would someone do that?
Wonfor didn’t ask her. “You don’t want to bring up why they’re there,” he said, discussing such situations. “Let’s make light of it, talk about the view. It was beautiful. We both wished we had cameras.”
The 22-year veteran firefighter is trained in high angle rescue. But the fire chief and captains who selected him for this particular rescue mission also factored in his experience as an arborist, working with ropes and climbing trees.
Wonfor said that once he started talking with the young woman, he thought “there was no way” she planned on jumping.
“She was too calm.”
The woman told him she feared she would be “in trouble” when she got to the ground. “She says, ‘I’m gonna get a big fine for this,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘No, you’re good. If you get a fine, I’ll pay… I’ve got about 20 Tim Cards in my pocket.”
It took him about an hour and 20 minutes to reach the top of the crane, carrying his gear and ropes. “It was gruelling,” he said. “I thought, ‘Why didn’t I bring my water bottle?’ … When I’m doing trees, I have a water hanging off me, maybe a Snickers bar. I had nothing (on Wednesday).”
From there, a crew member in the crane operator’s booth used a mechanized system to lower the firefighter on ropes. When he reached the woman, sitting on a metre-long plank above the hook, he set about putting her into a rescue harness. She helped him, he said. “She had some experience (with climbing gear).”
The two held each other — in what Wonfor called a “death grip” — and the crew in the operator booth lowered them to the ground. After they landed at 8:30 a.m., the woman was taken into police custody.
Police said Wednesday afternoon that Lazo will be charged with six counts of mischief by interfering with property. She is to appear in court on Thursday.
Wonfor missed his 8:15 a.m. hockey game. There was another one, though, at 11 a.m. — part of a tournament between Toronto fire department districts. Wonfor was District 31’s goalie. After speaking to television cameras and reporters, he excused himself and headed to the arena.
His team lost 5-3.
“Goaltending killed us,” he said in the dressing room afterwards.
With files from The Canadian Press
• Email: jedmiston@nationalpost.com | Twitter: jakeedmiston
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