Stuck Above Paris, Couple Decides to Take the Plunge

Tourists sit while police catch Eiffel Tower climber
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 19, 2023 7:15 PM CDT
Stranded on the Eiffel Tower, Couple Makes a Decision
Police officers patrol the Trocadero plaza near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Tuesday.   (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

Police arrested a man climbing Thursday on the Eiffel Tower, leading to visitors being temporarily stranded at the summit—including a reporter for the AP and a Washington, DC, couple who decided during the wait to get married. Amir Khan had been planning to propose to Kat Warren later Thursday in a Paris garden away from the crowds, with a romantic dinner on the River Seine also on the menu. But when the lifts were temporarily shut down because of the climber, stranding the couple and others at the top, Khan decided to spring his surprise. Pat Eaton-Robb, an AP newsman from Connecticut who was also stuck up there, got their story.

"I figured we might be here longer than I imagined," Khan said, per the AP. "So I didn't want to miss dinner and she always wanted to be proposed to on or under the Eiffel Tower. So I figured, 'This is it, this is the moment.'" He got the answer he wanted. "He had a pretty good chance of me saying 'Yes' all along," Warren said, laughing. Besides, when trapped at the top of a 1,083-foot tower, how can anyone say "No?" Had that happened, "somebody else would be climbing the Eiffel Tower today possibly," she joked. The climber was found between the tower's second and third floors, said Alice Beunardeau, communications director for the Paris landmark. A specialist team of climbing firefighters led the man down, and police arrested him, she said.

(More Eiffel Tower stories.)

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