If you thought sitting on the walls and smoking weed at Rittenhouse Square was transgressive civil disobedience, one man dangerously proved on Monday that you have scant idea what it means to break with the rules of society and the law.
A little after 3 p.m., reports began to surface on Twitter that a naked man had driven a taxi through Rittenhouse Square, causing panic and mayhem before crashing into a trash can.
Philadelphia police, who initially acknowledged receiving reports of the incident, told Philly.com an unidentified male suspect first took control of the cab after attacking a woman as she left the vehicle on the 2000 block of Locust Street. The suspect reportedly climbed into the driver's seat when the cab driver got out to help the female victim.
Video of the incident was uploaded to Vimeo by witness Linus Schill, a 17-year-old student and aspiring filmmaker at Masterman High School.
Man Steals Cab and Drives Through Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia from BLT Films on Vimeo.
"I was sitting in the park and all of a sudden there was this really loud screeching sound," said Schill, who added that while the park was not particularly crowded, people who were there took immediate notice. "We thought it was someone stopping briefly, but then it continued and there was a lot of smoke. I started to film it. We realized it clearly wasn't actually a cab driver."
Schill said the driver slammed into a trash can and then wound up in the intersection of 18th and Walnut streets.
"People were jumping out of the way at the intersection. Everyone was screaming," Schill said. "It seemed like some people had to jump for their life."
In a scene Schill described as "moving to watch," frantic pedestrians and passersby rushed the taxicab and began to pull the suspect out of the vehicle.
"The second he was trapped at the intersection and stopped, people rushed at him," Schill said. "I was taken aback by how many people rushed to get the guy out of the car. There could have been a much more serious accident."
Because the suspect was naked, Schill said, some of those who apprehended him brought trash bags into the pile to cover him up. Some people at the scene seemed to know that the cab had been stolen after a woman was assaulted, he added.
The suspect reportedly was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital, where his condition was not immediately known. It also remains unclear what happened to the female victim and the taxi driver. Police have not announced any charges and declined to comment on the incident.
For Schill, who was grateful nobody got hurt, it was the kind of moment that should give him a solid grounding in the importance of action in cinema.
"The more that was happening," he said, "the weirder and weirder things got."