January 28, 2014, 3:36 PM
SAM COSTANZA FOR NEW YORK DAILY
Left to right: Christian Perez, Manuel Rondon, Anthony Aquino and John Rodriguez in 2010 near where they were arrested for hitting a cop with a snowball.
His alibi is melting fast.
A cop who claimed he pulled his gun on some Bronx teens after they bombarded him with snowballs admitted Tuesday he exaggerated the attack.
"One," Officer Adonis Ramirez conceded on the stand, when asked exactly how many snowballs hit him.
RELATED: COP'S CASE AGAINST 'SNOWBALL FOUR' MELTS AWAY Ramirez made the embarrassing admission after the lawyer for the teens, who filed a $10 million false arrest suit against the NYPD, called the cop a "bully with a badge."
"They did what kids always do, they throw snowballs at each other," attorney Neil Wollerstein said of his clients, sitting quietly in shirts and ties in the first row.
But when one of them landed near the off-duty cop, Ramirez overreacted and had them charged with criminal possession of a weapon, Wollerstein said.
Surveillance video captured the four young men’s encounter with the police officer, Adonis Ramirez.
"A single snowball is lobbed in the most innocent and playful fashion" and "the lives of these young kids changed forever," the lawyer said.
The charges against the five, who were between the ages of 17 and 22 when they were arrested in February 2010, were later dropped by the Bronx district attorney's office.
Wollerstein said they have evidence that backs up the teens.
RELATED: ANGRY OFF-DUTY COP WAVES HIS GUN AROUND AFTER HIS HUMMER IS PELTED WITH SNOWBALLS "We know this because the entire video was captured on building surveillance," he said. "We're confident to let that video speak for itself."
But a lawyer for Ramirez, a seven-year vet, stuck by his story that he pulled his loaded handgun after he felt "a hard object hit him in the lower back" and heard one of the teens yell in Spanish, "Let's jump him!"
Enid, Alvarez/New York Daily News
Christin Perez (left) said he and his friends were involved in a snowball fight, but that they hit the off-duty cop on accident.
Ramirez was "fearing for his safety," attorney Stephen Kim said.
RELATED: BRONX BUDDIES FACING YEAR IN JAIL AFTER 'HITTING' OFF-DUTY TRANSIT COP - WITH A SNOWBALL! "His actions were reasonable, reasonable and justified," Kim said.
And the teens, some of whom had minor brushes with the law before, sustained no physical or psychological damage as a result of their encounter with Ramirez, Kim said.
In his complaint, Ramirez claims he was off-duty and out of uniform when he ran into the teens and they hit him with "multiple" snowballs.
Reached by the Daily News, the teenagers insisted Ramirez failed to identify himself as a cop when he pulled out a gun and ordered them to the ground.
"I thought he was some drug dealer who was going to shoot me in the head and walk away," said a then 19-year-old Christian Perez. "We only hit him once and it was by mistake."
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