VIDEO: Ka’Von Wooden loved trains. The 15-year-old had an encyclopedic knowledge of the subway system and dreamed of becoming a train operator.
Instead, on a December morning in 2022, Ka’Von died after he climbed to the roof of a moving J train in Brooklyn and then fell onto the tracks as it headed onto the Williamsburg Bridge.
He is one of more than a dozen New Yorkers, many young boys — in the most recent case, young girls — who have been killed or badly injured after falling off speeding trains.
Other risks include being crushed between the train and tunnel walls and being electrocuted by high-voltage subway tracks. “Subway surfing” dates back a century but it has been fueled by social media.
Early Saturday morning, New York City police found two girls dead — ages 12 and 13 — in what apparently was a subway surfing game that turned fatal, authorities said. MTA President Demetrius Crichlow said in a statement that “getting on top of a subway car isn’t ‘surfing’ — it’s suicide.”
