A woman who scampered up a construction crane, and fell asleep inside its operator’s cab while shirtless, was placed in handcuffs by police officers before being lowered to the ground.

Emergency crews were called to a construction site in downtown Toronto around 6:30 a.m. Thursday because a woman was in the operator’s cab of the crane.

Toronto Fire District Chief William Bygrave estimated that the woman would have climbed about 14 storeys, or nearly 50 metres, in order to reach the cab.

It was not immediately clear why the woman had made the climb, or for how long she had been in the cab before anyone noticed her.

“At this time, we don’t know how she got in,” Bygrave told reporters. “Sometime during the night she must have gone over a fence.”

A security guard was working overnight but the site would have otherwise been empty, Bygrave said.

Initially shirtless, the woman was seen putting on a shirt and a safety harness as police negotiators spoke with her.

After more than an hour of negotiation efforts, the woman left the cab and was joined by police officers on the crane’s platform.

“She wasn’t too compliant,” Bygrave said.

The accused, who has since been identified by police as 34-year-old Lindsey Flockhart, was placed in handcuffs and lowered to the ground shortly after 8:30 a.m. She was taken into an ambulance for assessment, then moved into a police cruiser and driven away.

Flockhart has been charged with two counts of mischief and failing to comply with a probation order. She will appear in court on Friday morning.

The crane is located at a construction site near Lakeshore Boulevard and Bathurst Street. It partially hangs over the Gardiner Expressway, and two eastbound lanes of the highway were closed in the area during the morning rush as crews worked to bring the woman to the ground.

Bygrave said crane rescues are “not uncommon” in Toronto. Firefighters had been called to a similar situation one day earlier.

“It does happen. People do get into these sites and they climb cranes for some reason,” he said.

Marisa Lazo spent several hours stranded on a crane in downtown Toronto in April 2017. She pleaded guilty to two counts of mischief and was granted an absolute discharge.

Lazo had scaled a crane, crawled along its boom and slid down to a pulley. A firefighter rescued after rappelling down to her location from the crane’s arm.