Last Updated on 03/25/2014 by Chris Gampat
Well, it seems 16-year-old Justin Casquejo wasn’t the first person to pull off accessing the roof of the 1 World Trade Center without permission.
Last September, a group of men managed to walk into the building and get to the roof at 3 in the morning then BASE jump their way down from there without anybody stopping them. And they caught all the action on video.
Apparently, Andrew Rossig, James Brady, Marco Markovich, and Kyle Hartwell, the men who were involved in the stunt, maintains that they didn’t see any security guards during their night jaunt and that, just like Casquejo, they were able to get into the complex through a hole in the fence. Rossig even claims that they “just kind of walked in,” raising serious concerns about the lax security in the one of the world’s supposedly most secure buildings.
Unlike Casquejo, however, the men managed to avoid getting arrested that day. Even worse, the authorities took more than four months to finally track them down and get proof that they were the men from the video. (They have since turned themselves in.)
The incident is yet another blow to the Port Authority and the NYPD, both of which are responsible for securing the complex from any trespassers and suspicious activities. A Port Authority official, probably in an effort to displace blame, claims that Brady worked for the construction company working on the site and had used his key card access to get into the site. Brady’s lawyer denies this by saying, “The Port Authority is spreading misinformation in an attempt to avoid blame.”
Of course, it doesn’t really matter how these men and a teenager managed to get to the roof of the building. The WTC is supposed to be impregnable but it seems that people can just walk in and out of it whenever they please and it’s starting to become a running joke. Obviously, these agencies need to focus on and take a hard look at this problem and make some big changes as soon as possible.
What they’re next step is to fix this serious problem remains to be seen. For now, let’s check out the WTC BASE jump video after the jump.
Via The Verge