In a tragic incident that occurred early Saturday morning in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, two young girls aged only 12 and 13 lost their lives while attempting a dangerous stunt outside a J train subway car.
According to the police, around 3 a.m., NYPD officers rushed to the Marcy Avenue subway station after receiving a report and found the two girls unconscious and unresponsive on the ground. Emergency responders pronounced them dead at the scene. The authorities have not yet disclosed the specific identities of the deceased.
New York City Transit Authority Director, Demetrius Crichlow, expressed his condolences over the tragedy, emphasizing that so-called “subway surfing” is not a game but playing with life: “Two children have lost their lives as a result, which is heartbreaking. Parents, teachers, and friends must clearly tell teenagers that climbing onto the side of a train is not ‘surfing’; it’s suicide.”
The city government and transportation department have long been taking action to combat subway surfing. Police pointed out that since November 2023, through drone monitoring, the NYPD has prevented and rescued over 200 teenagers attempting subway surfing. However, in the past three years, excluding the two girls in this incident, at least 16 individuals have lost their lives due to subway surfing.
Last year, a mother from Manhattan, Norma Nazario, sued TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, Meta (parent company of Instagram), as well as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York City Transit Authority. She accused social media platforms of promoting risky behaviors and encouraging teenagers to imitate such actions, leading to her son’s fatal fall on the J train in Brooklyn.