Subway Surfer Nabbed in Queens Days After Boy’s Tragic Death on Williamsburg Bridge

NYPD officers arrested a 17-year-old for subway surfing on a 7 train in Queens late Wednesday, not even 48 hours after a 15-year-old boy doing the same on a J train over the Williamsburg Bridge hit his head on a piece of the span and fell under the train, which ran over and killed him, authorities say.

The 17-year-old in the Queensboro Plaza case, which happened around 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, wasn’t hurt. Cops charged him with reckless endangerment after seeing him riding on the outside back platform of the last car as it pulled into the station, according to officials. They say the teen has no prior criminal history or transit summonses.

Monday’s tragedy involving Zachery Nazario in Brooklyn was the second such death in the borough in less than 90 days. Nazario, was on a Manhattan-bound J train shortly before 11 p.m. Monday when he fell, according to police.

He died at the scene. His mother, Norma Nazario, said she thinks he got distracted or looked to one side and his head hit a beam, throwing him to the tracks. She also said her son had spent the day in Brooklyn with his girlfriend and was heading back home when he died.

“I don’t wish this to any mother,” Norma Nazario said, adding her son dreamed one day of joining the U.S. Marines.

She said she had never talked to her son about the dangers of subway surfing because she didn’t even know it was a thing that teens had been doing. The mother blamed social media for driving the behavior in young people.

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 off as it pulled into the Marcy Avenue stop in broad daylight on Dec. 2. The boy made contact with the electrified third rail and died.

The 15-year-old was killed while riding on top of the Manhattan-bound train on the bridge Monday night. NBC New York’s Adam Harding reports.

Roughly six months before that, a 15-year-old boy lost an arm in a terrifying subway surfing incident in Queens in late August. And in mid-June, wild video surfaced showing people riding atop a subway train as it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge. There were eight people on top of that J train during the early December trip. No one was hurt — but the MTA sought to draw attention at the time to what they described as a concerning — and escalating — dangerous trend.

The transit agency doesn’t differentiate between reports of subway surfing versus moving between train cars versus other incidents of people riding outside trains, rather grouping them all together into one annual sum. Either way, the number of incidents skyrocketed last year.

In 2022, there were 928 reports of such incidents. That’s more than double the number reported the year before (206) and in 2020 (199), though those years may have seen data impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, the 2022 figure represents a 160% spike from 2019 levels (ridership in November and December 2022 had roughly returned to 2019 levels).

“Subway surfing is not only illegal, it is super reckless, extremely dangerous and people die doing so. Tragedies like this are avoidable,” NYPD Acting Chief of Transit Michael Kemper said earlier this week.