An 11-year-old boy died after falling from a subway train in Brooklyn Monday morning, police said.
The boy fell off the top of a northbound G train and onto the tracks near the 4th Avenue-9th Street Station in Park Slope around 10:15 a.m., authorities said.
Emergency responders pronounced him dead at the scene, the FDNY said. His name wasn’t immediately released.
In a statement, New York City Transit's interim president, Demetrius Crichlow, called the incident "another avoidable heart-wrenching reminder that riding outside trains is not a game and the subway is not a social media studio."
"It should not take more tragic termination of young lives for parents and classmates of those who would climb on top of subway cars to help them comprehend the devastating risk," Crichlow said.
Hours after the incident, G train service remained “extremely limited” in both directions due to the ongoing investigation, the MTA said.
Northbound F trains were also running with severe delays, according to the MTA.
At least five people have died this year while subway surfing, all of them under 18 years old, according to officials.
Last year, the MTA says it arrested more than 130 people attempting to subway surf. Officials say more than 95% of them were minors.
Arrests are only part of the effort. The second part is the campaign “Subway Surfing Kills — Stay Inside Arrive Alive,” which launched in September 2023.
“In the absence of accountability, I fear this trend is only going to continue,” Matthew Bergman, founding attorney for Social Media Victim’s Law Center, said.
Bergman represents the mother of Zackery Nazario, a 15-year-old who died while subway surfing in early 2023.
Nazario’s mother is suing TikTok, Instagram and the MTA.
“MTA has obligations to patrol its cars better and to take reasonable steps to make it harder for kids to engage in this dangerous activity,” Bergman said.
In statement, the MTA says, in part, “This is another avoidable heart-wrenching reminder that riding outside trains is not a game and the subway is not a social media studio. It should not take more tragic termination of young lives for parents and classmates of those who would climb on top of subway cars to help them comprehend the devastating risk.”