Traffic stopped along Norodom Boulevard near Street 242 Sunday afternoon when a visibly troubled woman climbed an electrical tower, refusing to come down.
According to Sin Rasmei, a police officer stationed at the intersection to guard Interior Minister Sar Kheng’s residence, the woman appeared at about 2:30 pm, riding on a garbage truck.
She then climbed the 10-meter steel tower, he said, and complained angrily that the garbage collectors had broken her trash container.
Once she reached the top, the woman stood straight up and swayed precariously, sometimes clutching at power lines, as hundreds of gawkers crowded into the street.
When bystanders first made an attempt to rescue the woman, Sin Rasmei said, she threw a knife down at them, but it fell to the pavement without hitting anyone.
Eventually, with the aid of two ladders, a group of men managed to subdue the struggling woman and pass her safely to the ground.
Some of the hundreds of observers who gathered to witness the spectacle believed the woman to be same woman who, in 2006, climbed an electric tower on nearby Street 240—an event that had similar results.
“I heard her mother say that she acts like this whenever she gets angry with someone at home,” Chaktomuk commune police chief Chea Sothy said.
Family members who escorted the woman away from the scene in a white sedan declined to comment on the incident.
