London base jumper leaps off EU’s tallest building, escapes into subway

LONDON – Witnesses say a base jumper has safely parachuted from the European Union’s tallest building, the Shard in London, and evaded police by jumping on the subway.

Passers-by captured the stunt on social media Saturday. Video footage and photographs showed the man with green chute deployed floating from the Shard onto a street near the London Bridge station.

They say the unidentified man folded his chute, handed it to an accomplice, and ran into the station minutes before police arrived.

It’s the first documented base jump since the 2012 completion of the Shard, a spire-shaped skyscraper that stands 95 stories and 1,016 feet high. Base jumpers did film themselves leaping from the structure when it was still under construction. The finished building has no external rooftop viewing platform.