The BASE jumpers hit with felony burglary charges for breaking into and parachuting off 1 World Trade Center spent four hours unchecked atop the tallest building in the nation, according to new court papers.
It took Andrew Rossig, James Brady and Marko Markovitch just 20 minutes to run to the top of the so-called Freedom Tower after sneaking onto the site through a hole in a fence on Sept. 29, 2013, the documents claim.
Once there, the daredevils “remained outside on the roof for approximately four hours, enjoying the magnificent views” above the 105th floor of the 1,776-foot skyscraper, the papers say.
They strapped on parachutes and eventually took the plunge at 3 a.m., landing safely on the West Side Highway as a fourth man, alleged lookout Kyle Hartwell, filmed from the street.
But when questioned by police in the months before they surrendered to authorities, two of the jumpers lied about the death-defying jump, the papers state.
“I didn’t have anything to do with the jump on Sept. 30, 2013, and I don’t know anyone who was involved,” Brady fibbed to cops on Nov. 26. “After I was arrested in 2012, in The Bronx, while attempting a BASE jump, I learned my lesson.”
Incredibly, Brady continued to tell cops he could have never pulled off the white-knuckle feat on his own, court papers say.
“I have done approximately 200 BASE jumps and I don’t consider myself a professional jumper,” he said.
Markovitch also lied to cops, court papers state, claiming he wasn’t even in New York that day. On Oct. 2, he told a detective he heard about the jump through friends and believed the adventurers “jumped from an aircraft, the Verizon building or the Freedom Tower.”
The group was busted on Feb. 17, the same day Hartwell admitted to cops that Brady, an ironworker who helped build 1 WTC, gave the thrill-seekers access to the site and stashed parachutes inside.
All four men pleaded not guilty to felony burglary and misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday, a day after a third and final video of the BASE jump was made public.
Their lawyers are fighting to get the felony charge — which carries a maximum sentence of seven years behind bars — dropped because no crime was actually committed inside the building.
“We’re not burglars . . . Really, at the end of the day, what did we do? We just trespassed,” Rossig said outside court, calling the felony charge “ridiculous.”
The stunt shed light on embarrassing security lapses at the World Trade Center site.
In March, a New Jersey teenager allegedly sneaked past a security guard to climb to the tower’s spire, as first reported by The Post.
Additional reporting by Philip Messing.