The mother of Zackery Nazario, inset, who was killed while “subway surfing,” has filed a lawsuit in the death. (Victim’s photo from the Nazario family lawyers; Subway photo from WABC/YouTube)
The mother of a 15-year-old boy who died riding atop a New York subway car is suing the city’s transit agency and social media companies that promoted the viral and dangerous “Subway Surfing Challenge” videos she says inspired her son to try climbing onto a moving subway car.
Zackery Nazario opened an unlocked train door and walked between moving cars before climbing to the roof of a Brooklyn-bound J train on Feb. 20, 2023. A beam struck him in the head on the Williamsburg Bridge while the train crossed the East River. He fell between cars onto the tracks, was run over by another train, and died.
“Social media and the MTA, they failed my son,” Norma Nazario, told WABC-TV. Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney of Social Media Victims Law Center, who represents the Nazario family, told the outlet that Zackery had some responsibility, too.
“No one is saying that there was not shared fault here, but what we are saying is that this didn’t have to happen,” he said.
The lawsuit names the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for creating a “serious and foreseeable risk of harm” to the boy. It also names ByteDance, Inc., which owns TikTok, Inc., and Meta Platforms, Inc.
In a statement, NYC Transit President Richard Davey said, “We’ve said it over and over — do not climb on top of trains because that won’t end well, and we implore parents to tell their children and friends to warn friends — avoid tragedy by riding inside.”
Representatives for TikTok and Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Law&Crime.
After a teen died last summer, TikTok told WABC subway surfing came first and, “More than 40,000 safety professionals are dedicated to keeping our community safe and work diligently to remove harmful content when found.”
Court documents said Zachary was “targeted, goaded and encouraged to engage in Subway Surfing.”
“At best, the social media defendants make these engineered addiction-by-design programming decisions to push young Americans into maximizing their engagement with the social media products by any means necessary; at worst, is the social media defendants operate in a manner that intends or recklessly disregards the catastrophic harms it is inflicting on children in the United States,” the complaint said.
The MTA knew young people were trying to climb atop moving subways but did little to lock doors or restrict access, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit spells out Zackery’s youth, including when he got his first cellphone at age 12. He quickly got onto TikTok and Instagram and developed an addiction to the platforms, court documents said.
He binge-watched videos promoting “Subway Surfing,” in which people climbed atop moving trains and other dangerous challenges a “minor should not have been allowed to see,” court documents said.
“TikTok and Instagram began pushing to 15-year-old Zackery a continuous stream of dangerous challenge videos,” the lawsuit alleges. “Instagram was aware that Zackery was seeing content that promoted the dangerous activity, and wanted to profit off of him trying it for himself.”
Thousands of dangerous and inappropriate videos flooded his account in the days before he died, all to try to increase his level of engagement, court documents said.
Subway surfing has been around since the 1980s, but the MTA noted a spike in people riding outside the trains in 2021, fueled by social media daredevils. Five people were killed doing the stunt in 2023, including Zackery, compared with five subway such deaths over four years between 2018 and 2022.
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