Student tries to impress date by leaping from building but ends up trapped for six hours

In these days of super-charged cinema heroes such as Spider-Man and Ironman, it ain’t always so easy to impress a girl.

Sometimes you have to reveal your own special powers - by jumping from a building.

That, at least, appears to have been the thinking of one Pittsburgh student who tried to impress his date by jumping from a rooftop only to end up wedged between two buildings.

Reports said that the drama began late on Monday night when the student, identified as Grant Birdsong, met a woman and took her to a city rooftop.

“The young man met a girl, brought her up to a rooftop and decided to impress her by leaping from one roof to the next,” Sonya Toler, the city’s public safety spokeswoman, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Ms Toler said that emergency crews worked for more than six hours to free 22-year-old Mr Birdsong, after the woman he was trying to impress dialed 911. They eventually reached him by breaching a wall in a local restaurant.

“We did that after a lot of jack-hammering and use of other heavy equipment,” Ms Toler said.

Pittsburgh Public safety Director Wendell Hissrich said: “It appears there were three walls that we had to go through and also we had people on the roof, one of the paramedics did rappel down the three stories to render assistance and to get a landmark as to where he was.”

Eventually, Mr Birdsong was brought out on a stretcher with a possibly broken ankle. He was able to give a wave to the young woman as he was loaded into the ambulance.

One student, Anthony Demaio, said: “I think he is an idiot for doing it, but at least he got the girl.”

Others were not impressed. Kamila Rak said: “If he was doing it to impress a girl, I personally would not be impressed at all. He really made a fool of himself, but she stayed.”