Pittsburgh police are working to identify two men caught on camera jumping off of a building in Downtown Pittsburgh.

The men entered a building in 1 PPG Place, near Stanwix Street and Third Avenue, and made their way to the rooftop before jumping off using parachutes, police said.

The BASE jumping incident happened at approximately 4:45 a.m. on April 9, and was caught on surveillance cameras. The men can be seen landing in the middle of the street with red, white and blue parachutes before getting into a black pickup truck and leaving. Other surveillance footage shows the men wearing dark clothing, knit caps and they appear to be carrying backpacks.

BASE is an acronym for building, antenna, span and earth — common objects that those who partake in the activity frequently jump from.

The incident last week was not the first time a building or structure in and around Pittsburgh has drawn BASE jumpers.

In 1986, two men walked into the U.S. Steel Building ahead of the Pittsburgh Marathon, went to the top of the 64-story building, and parachuted off, according to Pittsburgh Press reports from the time.

The men, Don Sulkowski and Alan Danko, told building guards they were a KDKA TV crew there to film the marathon. Guards escorted them to the top without asking for credentials and watched as they climbed onto a window ledge and jumped.

“It scared the hell out of me,” one security guard told the Press May 19, the day after the incident.

The pair landed safely in the lower parking lot of the former Civic Arena, got into separate cars, and drove off.

They identified themselves to police later that day. Police filed disorderly conduct and defiant trespassing charges. They ultimately pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid $98.50 in fines and court costs.

A few years later in 1990, a Ross man jumped from the Emlenton Bridge on Interstate 80 and landed a disorderly conduct citation — as did six friends there to watch the jump, according to reports from the time.

In 2011, witnesses reported seeing a man jump from Mount Washington and parachute onto a Station Square parking garage, according to KDKA-TV.

It’s also become a spectator sport of sorts.

In West Virginia each year, the one-day “Bridge Day” festival draws thousands of people to Fayetteville to jump — or watch others jump — from the New River Gorge Bridge. The bridge rises 876 feet above the New River, according to the official history of Bridge Day. The span turns into a legal BASE jumping site for one day during the third weekend of October each year. The bridge is shut down to vehicle traffic during the festival, which commemorates the completion of the bridge in 1977.

First Published: April 15, 2025, 3:43 p.m.
Updated: April 16, 2025, 7:54 p.m.