A 14-year-old boy critically injured after falling from a train while subway surfing in Brooklyn was encouraged by his friends to try the dangerous stunt, the victim’s sister told the Daily News Tuesday.
The teen landed on the tracks at the Hewes St. station in Williamsburg after falling from a northbound express train along the J and M lines around 3:41 p.m. Monday, police said.
“He’s a good kid just following some friends that are not good for him,” the teen’s older sister said outside their family’s home in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
After falling onto the track bed, the teen was then struck, either by the same train he’d been surfing or a second train that followed behind it, cops said.
A law enforcement source said one of the boy’s feet was partially severed.
A transit source said the boy was found lying between the Manhattan-bound local track and the center track.
Power to the tracks was cut off about three minutes later, and the teen was rushed to Bellevue Hospital. He was initially listed as being stable, but police on Tuesday said the boy’s condition had been downgraded to critical.
“He’s still in the hospital,” said the victim’s sister, who declined to share her name. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Another 14-year-old boy, Akhi Butler, became the city’s first and only subway surfing fatality of 2026 to date when he fell from a train passing over the Williamsburg Bridge on May 22.
Butler and another subway surfer, an 18-year-old man, were found unconscious on the roadbed of the J and M lines on the bridge around 6:50 p.m.
Butler died at the scene. The older surfer was taken to Bellevue Hospital in critical condition, cops said.
And on July 22, a 16-year-old girl was seriously injured when she struck a beam while subway surfing atop a train in Queens.
The teen was struck as she surfed a Far Rockaway-bound A train pulling into the Broad Channel station near West and Noel Roads in Broad Channel around 3:12 p.m.
At least five people died from subway surfing incidents last year, cops said. Six others, most of them teens, died in 2024. The youngest was just 11.
Over the past few years, cops and the MTA have taken a multi-pronged approach to discourage thrill-seekers. Last year, the MTA ramped up its “Ride Inside and Stay Alive” campaign featuring Queens-born BMX Athlete Nigel Sylvester.
The NYPD also began flying drones along above-ground subway lines to keep an eye out for subway surfers.