TOWER OF DOOM
How abandoned skyscraper the ‘Tower of David’ became world’s tallest SLUM ruled by ex-con who’d hurl rivals from helipad
AN enormous skyscraper known as the Tower of David became home to thousands of people in Venezuela with nowhere else to go.
But left unfinished and abandoned by the government, it became a giant, vertical slum ruled by a brutal former convict.
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Known as El Nino, or The Boy, an ex-con and born-again Christian slumlord ruled over the 3,000 people living there with an iron fist.
The tyrant was even known to cut up his rivals and throw them from the roof of the Tower in the early days of his reign.
The Caracas Tower and it's slumlord king became so notorious they were even featured in dystopian US thriller series Homeland.
Damian Lewis' character Brody is shot by Colombian drug smugglers and taken to the Tower, where he is held by El Nino and becomes addicted to heroin.
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Construction began in 1990 on the 45-storey block, which was initially intended to be a hub for the city's financial district.
After the main investor died in 1993, the government took control of the building, but failed to complete it.
The six buildings that made up the complex were left without lifts, electricity, running water, balcony railings, windows and even walls.
In 1998 the country's president, Hugo Chavez, encouraged the poor to take over the empty building and claim it as their own.
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By 2007 a growing community of "invaders" had moved into the third-highest skyscraper in Venezuela, forming a city inside a city.
They painted Chavez's picture on the walls, rigged up electricity for the 50 families on every floor and even took over the helipad on its roof.
Residents also managed to rig up running water to the 22nd floor.
Those living in what is likely the world's tallest slum even developed their own infrastructure, with shops, guards and electric gates.
El Nino oversaw "law-making" in the makeshift city, using minions to demand bribes from journalists who wanted to visit and dispatching a manager to every floor.
The thousands who lived there were evicted as the government moved them to state-built housing over 20 miles away.
Soldiers with AK-47s and cops in riot gear started moving them out in 2014, as they began the process of dismantling the slum tower.
It was one of about 150 buildings occupied by homeless people in the capital.
Caracas minister Ernesto Villegas said that the eviction was ordered because the building was unsanitary and unsafe and that children had fallen to their deaths.
But despite the terrifying early reign of El Nino, the missing walls and lack of typical infrastructure, some of the residents said they would refuse to leave.
Many also said they would miss the well established community there, with it's thousands of residents enough to rival the size of a small town.
They also wondered how possible it would be to find work in Cua, a town south of Caracas where the government planned to relocate them.
The Tower of David is not the only giant, abandoned building to grace the skies.
The so-called Hotel of Doom, a £1.6 billion triangular skyscraper in Pyongyang, has been under construction since 1987.
It has never opened its doors, or hosted a single guest.
The 105-storey building was set to be the jewel in the capital's crown in terms of tourist accommodation.
Yet the grand plans for the sprawling skyscraper ground to a halt over 30 years ago when the country's economy crumbled.
And nestled inside New York's impressive skyline is an abandoned skyscraper dubbed "The Leaning Tower of FiDi".
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Construction was halted in late 2020 after developers realised the building had a 3-inch tilt.
The untouched 200,000 square-foot structure has since remained in limbo amid years of legal battles.
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