Rob Wonfor describes himself as a “bit of a monkey,” and the firefighter’s climbing skills came in handy Wednesday morning when he rescued a woman perched on a crane high above a downtown Toronto construction site.The woman was brought to the ground by Wonfor just before 8:30 a.m., after a 2 ½ hour rescue operation just east of the Wellesley subway station, near Church St.Hundreds of onlookers snapped photos and cheered Wonfor, a 52-year-old acting captain, after he rappelled down from the crane’s block with the woman after placing her in a safety harness. The woman, who appeared to be in her 20s, was calm as the pair touched ground. She was handcuffed and led to a stretcher, before being loaded into an ambulance and taken away. She is charged with six counts of criminal mischief, police say. Officers said the woman will remain in police custody until she appears in court Thursday.Wonfor was checked out briefly by paramedics before speaking to reporters at the scene, where he described the person he’d just rescued as “a brave girl.”“She said, ‘I just want to get down,’ ” Wonfor said. “She was great.”It wasn’t immediately clear why the woman had gone up the crane, and the firefighter said “we didn’t get into discussing that.”The angle of the crane made the height at which the woman was trapped difficult to estimate, but Toronto Fire Chief Matthew Pegg said the block on which she was perched was at least 12 storeys above the ground.Wonfor was calm after the ordeal, quipping, “I moisturize,” when asked by reporters about his age.Asked how he got the assignment, he said, “I was volun-told: ‘You’re going up.’ ”Wonfor also had praise for the Toronto police Emergency Task Force negotiator who scaled the crane along with him, and talked to both the firefighter and the woman to help them remain calm. ...
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