Last week, a 16-year-old daredevil exposed security lapses at the new World Trade Center, sneaking through a hole in the fence and up to the very top of the building. He actually wasn’t the first: A group of three BASE jumpers, with a fourth guy on lookout duty below, made it up to the spire last September and parachuted down in the middle of the night.
Two of the men, clad in black, were spotted on security footage landing near the Goldman Sachs building around 3 a.m. almost half a year ago, raising all kinds of questions. Today, they’re expected to finally turn themselves in.
“They are accused of sneaking into the World Trade Center, going through quite possibly the same hole in the fence that this kid climbed through last week that they never fixed, going to the top and parachuting off,” the lawyer for Andrew Rossig, on of the accused men, told the New York Post.
Along with Rossig, who has been busted for unauthorized jumps at least twice before, James Brady, Marco Markovich, and Kyle Hartwell, the lookout, are also expected to face burglary charges.
“They walked up — they didn’t get a ride up like that kid,” the lawyer said. “Certainly it should be embarrassing to the city that after six months they’ve been investigating this and yet they’ve made no efforts to fix the hole in the fence to the No. 1 terror target in the world.”
Brady’s attorney added, “My client intended no harm. There was no harm caused and he wants nothing more than to put this behind him.”
At least one of the men filmed the jump via helmet-cam, and the city currently has the footage. YouTube needs it more.
