NEW YORK – New York City police arrested a 17-year-old for “surfing” the 7 train in Queens on Wednesday night, not even 48 hours after a 15-year-old boy did so aboard a J train on the Williamsburg Bridge, he hit his head on a piece of the span and fell under the train, which rammed him and killed him, authorities said.
The 17-year-old in the Queensboro Plaza case, which happened around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, was uninjured. Cops charged him with reckless endangerment after seeing him climb onto the outer rear platform of the last car when it pulled up to the station, authorities said. They say the teenager has no criminal record or court records.
Monday’s tragedy involving Zachery Nazario in Brooklyn was the second such death in the county in less than 90 days. Nazario, was on a J train bound for Manhattan shortly before 11 p.m. Monday when he fell, police said.
He died instantly. His mother, Norma Nazario, said she thought he got distracted or looked to the side and his head hit a beam, throwing him onto the tracks. She also said her son spent the day in Brooklyn with his girlfriend and was returning home when she died.
“I wouldn’t wish that on any mother,” Norma Nazario said, adding that her son dreams of one day joining the US Navy.
She said she never told her son about the dangers of “surfing” on the subway because she didn’t even know it was something teenagers did. The mother blamed social media for driving behavior among the youngsters.
His death came about two months after an eerily similar incident in Brooklyn claimed the life of another 15-year-old boy. He was on top of a J train and fell when he stopped at the Marcy Avenue stop in broad daylight on December 2. The child came into contact with the electrified third rail and was killed.
About six months earlier, a 15-year-old boy had lost his arm in a horrific ‘surfing’ incident on the Queens subway in late August. And in mid-June a wild video surfaced showing people climbing atop a subway train as it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge. There were eight people atop this J-train during the trip in early December. No one was hurt, but the MTA attempted to draw attention at the time to what it described as a disturbing and dangerous growing trend.
The transit agency does not distinguish between reports of subway navigation, movement between cars and other incidents of people getting off trains, but lumps them all into an annual sum. However, the number of incidents skyrocketed last year.
In 2022, 928 such incidents were reported. This is more than double the number reported the previous year (206) and in 2020 (199), although those years may have seen data affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, the 2022 figure represents a 160% increase from 2019 levels (passenger numbers in November and December 2022 had returned to around 2019 levels).
“Taking the subway is not only illegal, it’s super reckless, extremely dangerous, and people are dying doing it. Tragedies like this are preventable,” NYPD acting traffic chief Michael Kemper said earlier this week.