A teenager was killed Friday afternoon in Brooklyn while riding on the outside of a subway train in a so-called subway surfing incident, transit officials said.
Police said a 911 call had been received at about 2:20 p.m. in response to a person being struck by a southbound F train at the Avenue N station. Emergency services workers pronounced the person dead at the scene.
Officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs New York City’s mass transit system, said that the person killed was a teenager who had been subway surfing, a dangerous stunt that typically involves riding on top of train cars.
“What happened today is heartbreaking, and our thoughts are with the teenager’s family,” Richard Davey, the president of New York City Transit, the authority division that operates the subway, said in a statement. “Subway surfing kills. Another innocent life has been lost, and it should not happen.”
The last confirmed subway surfing death occurred on Dec. 4., M.T.A. officials said.
In September, city and state officials began a message campaign to raise awareness among school-age people about the dangers of riding outside of trains. The authority has placed digital signs throughout the transit system and broadcasts announcements recorded by students.
The Police Department has stationed special patrols on the J, Z and 7 lines during after-school hours; officials have identified these lines as having a high risk of subway surfing.
Since school began in September, police officers have stopped about 11 people a month from surfing, the M.T.A. said.
The authority has also worked with social media sites to remove footage of people surfing to discourage the practice. Collectively, the sites, including YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, have prevented the posting of or removed more than 10,000 photos and videos related to subway surfing, some as recently as this week, the M.T.A. said.
The number of people riding outside trains, a category that can include riding on top of cars, between them and hanging from the sides, more than quadrupled from 2021 to 2022, from 206 to 928; there were 490 in 2019, before ridership declined amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to M.T.A. data. Mr. Davey said last year that the vast majority of incidents involved people riding between cars.
The No. 7 line, which runs from the Flushing Main Street station in Queens to 34th Street-Hudson Yards on Manhattan Far West Side, had become one surfing hot spot, Sarah Meyer, the M.T.A.’s chief customer officer at the time, told The Times last year.