Hold My Beer and Watch This!

Two men in Pineville, Louisiana, went out for a few drinks Monday night, and the casual encounter turned criminal after the two decided to scale a nearby cell tower. Firefighters at the Holiday Village Fire Department were awaked by a call from the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office after 4 am on Tuesday morning, after someone reported screaming from the front of the station. When the firefighters went outside to check, they heard two people yelling about climbing higher. The Town Talk reported, “The voices people heard belonged to 21-year-old Joseph Waldron Johnson Jr. and 19-year-old Joshua Caleb Sharp, two St. Tammany Parish men who were climbing a cellphone tower in front of Skateville next to the fire station. The two were attending a graduation party at the skating rink. They gained access to the tower by throwing a beach towel over a few barbed wire strands atop a fence that surrounds the tower.” Once the deputies and firefighters arrived, one man was told to climb down from where he was—halfway up the tower, but the other was at the top, and not moving. The fire department’s Special Operations Response Team came to rescue the man at the top, and both were arrested and taken to the Rapides Parish Detention Center. Both were charged with unauthorized entry of critical infrastructure, disturbing the peace by intoxication and littering.