Continued: 3 arrested in foiled BASE-jumping attempt from Minneapolis condo

Three men were ticketed for trespassing early Tuesday after what police say was a foiled attempt to parachute from the top of a Northeast Minneapolis condominium.

Reached Tuesday night, one of those arrested said that he is an avid skydiver and BASE-jumper who has more than once leapt from a building, but that the 3:20 a.m. arrest at the 28-story Pinnacle tower at 20 2nd St. NE. stemmed from an innocent misunderstanding. (BASE is an acronym for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth, and BASE-jumping involves leaping from fixed objects such as buildings, bridges and antennas.)

"It may have been some miscommunication," said Joe Johnson, 36, of Center City, Minn. "We had been BASE-jumping earlier in the day, but we have a friend that lives there and we may have been visiting our friend."

Johnson wouldn't say where the trio had been jumping earlier in the day.

Police spokesman Sgt. Jesse Garcia said the evidence suggested that Johnson wasn't on the level. The three were arrested with parachutes, lock-picking equipment, walkie-talkies and cameras, he said, and apparently had used scaffolding to get to an area of the building, although Garcia was uncertain of what level.

"They had a plan to get to the top of the Pinnacle and BASE-jump and parachute down," Garcia said. "They got caught trying to further this plan, and they never had a chance to basically, quote, get it off the ground."

BASE-jumping is illegal in Minneapolis and most other cities.

There's a good reason for that, Garcia said: It's dangerous. The arresting officers may have saved the men's lives, he said.

"It's not like they're jumping off the Sears Tower," he said. "It's buildings in Minnesota."

But Johnson, who said he is a skydiving instructor and founder of Fall Free, an organization that takes at-risk kids on tandem skydiving jumps, said he and others are professional and in control of the situation. He said he has BASE-jumped from as low as 170 feet and as high as 1,200 feet.

"We know it's a risk, and we accept that risk," he said. "Nobody understands us until you can get into our minds and really listen to what we have to say. This little incident here gets blown out of proportion and we look like bad guys and loose cannons, but we're not."

Johnson and the two other men, whose names were not available, will appear in court in mid-May. He said he will fight the charge.

Abby Simons • 612-673-4921

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