Veronica Levesque heard weird noises coming from outside her house when she started making coffee around 4 a.m. Wednesday.
She banged on the walls, hoping it was someone outside who would go away, but the noises didn’t stop. Levesque woke her partner, Peter Rairdon, and they discovered a man on the roof of their house near the intersection of 14th and Allen streets.
The man was yelling about his drugs being inside the couple’s chimney, Levesque said.
Rairdon went outside to see what he could do as Levesque called 911. Police showed up quickly, they said. A crisis response team and Bangor Community Action Team also arrived, all working to try to get the man off the roof.
For seven hours, he stayed near the chimney, occasionally yelling expletives. He would stand up and walk around a bit, barefoot on the metal roof in direct sunlight. Temperatures hit 91 degrees Wednesday morning.
Police took the man into protective custody around 11:15 a.m.
Levesque believes the man took a ladder from behind their garage and climbed onto an addition at the back of the house. From there he somehow climbed another 8 feet to get onto the main roof.
Levesque and Rairdon had lawn chairs set up on a shady street corner and roughly 15 people gathered around them, commiserating and offering cold drinks to the couple. Neighbors said this is a symptom of Bangor’s homelessness crisis, months after the city closed an encampment.
Levesque said she was thankful the man didn’t come inside, which was her first fear when she heard the noises Wednesday morning.
During negotiations, the Bangor Fire Department sent firefighters up in an aerial basket, which still had an axe in it, Levesque said. The man took the axe, she said.
He could be seen swinging an axe while he was on the roof.
The Bangor Fire Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The man had taken a roof cap off the chimney and threw it to the ground. He also pulled soot out of the chimney, Rairdon said.
The couple is worried about the damage he may have caused to the chimney, including picking off the concrete around it and messing with the interior. They said the city told them to submit an estimate of damages to the roof for it to be covered.
Levesque said she just wants to see the man get help.
