Call him a daredevil, call him a criminal: a 16-year-old boy just broke into One World Trade Center, a skyscraper touted by some as “the number-one target for terrorism in the entire planet,” just to snap a few quick pictures and climb back down. He was promptly arrested. Go figure.
Watch the full news report here:
The stuntman in question is Justin Casquejo, a high school student from Weehawken, New Jersey. He’s been charged with a misdemeanor of trespassing, though there’s an argument to be made that the port authority and police should be thanking the kid for exposing security weaknesses so early.
The teen slipped through a hole in the construction fence outside, climbed up some scaffolding, then rode the elevator up to the top, where he walked right past a sleeping security guard (who has since been fired), and climbed to the top of the spire.
A shot taken months earlier of Casquejo suddenly looks pretty ominous. (Via The Village Voice.)
The story reminds us of a similar one a few months back, when two bold photographers illegally scaled the tallest building in China and came back down with incredible high-res shots.
Casquejo isn’t a professional photographer, and we haven’t seen his rooftop proofs yet—which will inevitably be fuzzy smartphone pics. Until they surface, he’s got some explaining to do. Naturally, he started his apology on Twitter:
I seriously apologize to anyone who may have been insulted or felt disrespected by my actions. It was not my intention to do so.
— Justin (@JustinCasquejo) March 21, 2014
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If it takes a 16 year old boy to show them their ineptitude regarding security then someone high up need to catch a wake up, they should be thanking him not prosecuting.