Half-naked man howling ‘like a wolf’ coaxed down from tree

A half-naked man up a tree sparked a major police operation after he refused to come down. The Czech national woke neighbours by crying and howling like a wolf when he climbed the tree in Cathays, Cardiff.

Martin Townley, 43, of Cathays Terrace, first spotted the man hiding between the leaves of the large tree after he woke him up. He said: “He’d been there since 6.30am. When he woke me up I thought it was a dog howling, he was crying.

“I came out to have a chat with him but he just said ‘leave me alone, it’s my tree’. “When I shouted at him a bit to try and tell him to be quiet, he said ‘that’s a bit inappropriate’. So I called the police.”

But when the police van, three officers and an ambulance arrived, the Czech man refused to speak English and an interpreter was called to talk the man down from the tree. At one point he also tried to take off his trousers but a police woman convinced him to keep them on.

The man sat on a lower branch of the large tree about 15 feet off the ground for two hours and finally swung himself down at 8.30am. Officers wrapped him in a blanket and he was checked over by ambulance crew before being taken away in the police van.

South Wales Police confirmed the man was a Czech national and that they had closed the road because there was a half naked man up a tree.