NY.- The challenge of “surfing” or climbing between or on the moving carriages in the New York subway has caused so far this year the death of at least seven people, including several teenagers, local media reported this Friday.
The most recent was recorded this Thursday, when a 14-year-old boy lost his life when he fell from the top of the locomotive, according to the NBC channel.
The victim, identified as Jevon Fraser, was found on a Queens County station platform with head trauma and died shortly after at the hospital where he was admitted.
This is the second incident in a week in which a child loses his life for “surfing” on the subway, after Brian Crespo died last Thursday and the 14-year-old friend who was accompanying him was injured after falling from the roof of a train car traveling from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
Zachery Nazario, 15, died in February. Fraser’s death is the seventh that has occurred in these circumstances, according to sources from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the state agency that manages the city’s transit network, quoted by NBC. .
NYPD Chief of Traffic Michael Kemper has said that the vast majority of The subway surfers are 12 and 13 year olds and he has reiterated that it is not about waves and that the subway system is not a playground.
Following Fraser’s death, Mayor Eric Adams asked TikTok to remove videos showing children surfing the subway, many of which have had millions of views.
Both Adams and other city councilors have called for more to be done to curb this dangerous practice.
After the death of Jevon Fraser, TikTok expressed condolences to the boy’s family and friends, noting that the subway surfing trend predates the platform.
He further indicated that “more than 40,000 security professionals are dedicated to keeping our community safe and work diligently to remove harmful content when they find it,” NBC noted.
In 2022, 928 incidents of people traveling on top of the train, between the carriages or hanging from the sides were recorded, compared to 490 in 2019, before the pandemic forced the reduction of passengers on the metro line.
