The University of Tennessee student who posted a photo of himself posing atop the Brooklyn Bridge earlier this year is being extradited to New York City to face charges.
David Karnauch was arrested in Chattanooga in connection to the selfie he took atop the New York City span in late June. The alleged trespassing was the latest in a spate of incidents on the Brooklyn Bridge and other landmarks throughout the city over the last several months.
Karnauch waived an extradition hearing and will be transported to New York city. Charges for the man weren't immediately available.
After he posted the photo to Instagram, Karnauch told NBC 4 New York over Skype that he scaled the bridge on impulse. He said he was never stopped or questioned, and he went home without issue.
"You could just get on a beam and it actually had handrails on the left and right side, and I just walked across the bridge and turned around to take a picture," he said from his home in Chattanooga.
"I don't recommend anybody else do it. It's not a smart thing to do because I know they take security on the bridges seriously," he said.
NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorisn John J. Miller called Karnauch a "knucklehead" after the photos were posted. He said that if officers had been patrolling where the 21-year-old had been climbing, he would have probably been arrested on the spot.
Karnauch's stunt follows a year of bridge breaches. In November, French tourist Yonathin Souid climbed the bridge to take photos, and Russian tourist Yaroslav Kolchin climbed a beam last August. Each was sentenced to community service.
On July 22, 2014, two bleached-white American flags were found planted on the bridge span. Two German artists claimed they'd installed the flags as part of a project to celebrate the German engineer who designed the bridge.
