Pair Arrested in Aerial Birthday Celebration

A Van Nuys man celebrated his 25th birthday by climbing to the top of a 200-foot construction crane in Burbank with a friend Wednesday and sharing a bottle of schnapps, a party that ended when police arrested them.

Fernando Holguin, whose birthday was Tuesday, and Bryan Petri, also 25, of Canoga Park, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing about 1 a.m. after a police officer and a firefighter climbed part way up the crane at a construction site at 1st Street N and Angeleno Avenue and ordered them down.

They were released on $250 bail.

“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” said Holguin, an electrician. “We walked out of a nightclub nearby and saw the tower. We looked at each other and said, ‘I dare you.’ About halfway up we could see the police station a couple blocks away and thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. But we kept going to the top.”

“Bryan said I didn’t have the nerve to do it and I don’t like to be challenged,” added Petri, who works in the pressroom of the Los Angeles Times plant in Chatsworth.

Although Holguin and Petri said they had been drinking, police said there was no indication the men were intoxicated.

“We took a bottle of peach schnapps up with us,” Holguin said. “We left it up there--empty.”

Police Sgt. Don Goldberg said the two men climbed over a fence surrounding the construction site and climbed a ladder attached to the crane’s arm. The men were making their way to the top of the crane when police began receiving calls from passers-by.

“It was one of the guy’s birthday and they thought it was a good way of celebrating,” Goldberg said. “I guess they didn’t have anything else to do.

“It was a foolish stunt. It was raining and the steps could have been slippery.”

Police lighted the crane with searchlights and an officer and a firefighter using safety harnesses climbed partway up and called to the men. After Holguin and Petri climbed down, the firefighter climbed all the way to the top to make sure no one remained.