Los Angeles police are launching a criminal investigation after a daredevil posted his viral tightrope walk between LA’s infamous graffiti towers on YouTube.
Ben Schneider, aka “Reckless Ben,” performed the feat in early May 45 stories high, on a nylon rope stretching between two of downtown LA’s Oceanwide Plaza towers. He walked the rope for two minutes and called it “moral graffiti.”
“This is the largest canvas the world has ever seen,” Schneider said. “I’m not a very good graffiti artist, but I can make crazy performance art, so I set up the slackline. It’s still there.”
The first half of the stunt involved entering the compound in downtown LA, with Schneider and his crew sneaking past the police to get inside.
The city of Los Angeles and LAPD have stepped up efforts to keep people out of buildings. The sprawling 1.5 million-square-foot property has been vacant and half-finished since 2019 — and has become a juggernaut for social media stunts and graffiti artists.
The city spent $1.1 million to secure the abandoned building, mostly for fencing, and set aside more money to clean up the site.
Arrests were made Earlier this year, law enforcement increased the number of patrols as more people showed up to add graffiti, and base jumpers parachuted from the half-built towers.
Schneider donned a duck mask when talking to KCAL News about his stunt.
“But now I have to walk around with a mask because I’m being actively investigated,” Schneider said.
The tightrope walk across Oceanwide Plaza has since been removed from the Reckless Ben YouTube page.
Related: Viral Los Angeles building covered in graffiti goes up for sale
