Boy, 15, dies subway surfing on train crossing NYC’s Williamsburg Bridge as girlfriend watches in horror: ‘I just don’t want it to happen again’
A 15-year-old boy was tragically killed while subway surfing atop a Brooklyn-bound J train while his girlfriend watched in horror, police said Tuesday.
The train was rumbling along the Williamsburg Bridge over the East River around 6:45 p.m. Monday when Zackery Nazario and his girlfriend went walking between train cars. When Zackery climbed onto the train’s roof, his 17-year-old girlfriend followed but only far enough to peer over the top, a police source said.
When Zackery turned to look back at his girlfriend, he was struck by a low beam and toppled between cars, cops said. He was run over by the train and died at the scene.
Zackery would have turned 16 on April 3. He lived with his mother, Norma Nazario, in an apartment in the East Village.
Nazario, 51, said she had no clue her son would do something so reckless.
“He was a great kid,” she said. “Very smart. He was in ninth grade. He had like an old soul, like he was beyond his age. I always used to tell people he’s like 15 going on like 40, because of the way he would speak to people. He would speak like me and you.”
Nazario said she learned of Zackery’s death from cops who came to her apartment around 10 p.m.
“They just knocked on the door and then they asked if they could come in to talk to me,” she said. “When the detective held my hand, I already knew.”
She last spoke to her son that afternoon after getting a FaceTime request from him for money. He attended the Clinton School, a public high school near Union Square Park.
“He was out with his girl yesterday because they had winter break,” Nazario said. “They had off the whole week. They went to ride CitiBikes around the area. Riding back and forth. Because I get the notification. And then I guess they just decided to go to Brooklyn.”
Nazario said she doesn’t want anyone else’s family to go through the pain she is feeling.
“I just don’t want it to happen again because to my knowledge, he’s the second kid this happened to,” she said. “Hopefully his friends will stop and will definitely realize it happened to the first one and it happened to him. Just stop. Just really stop. It’s illegal. I’m sorry that, you know, he didn’t listen.”
Nazario also urged the MTA to do more to discourage kids from surfing the trains.
“I don’t know how MTA cannot see a teen on top of the car,” she said. “I’ve seen videos. Express trains. All the people on the platform, they recording them. I don’t understand how the MTA isn’t wondering what they are recording? And then they should in the next stop get out and see.”
MTA officials urged parents and educators to help spread the message about the dangers of riding outside train cars.
“We cannot stress enough how dangerous it is to ride on the outside of trains,” said NYC Transit President Richard Davey. “Our hearts go out to loved ones at yet another tragic time. We implore other families to speak with their children on the real dangers of what can seem like a thrill but is too often deadly.”
NYPD Chief Michael Kemper echoed the importance of riding safely.
“My sincere thoughts and prayers are with his family,” Kemper said. “With that said, I would like to take this opportunity to again, remind people ... particularly to educators and New Yorkers with young impressionable children, the subway system is not a playground.”
Mayor Adams said he understood that boys will be boys, and that kids get reckless at times. But he added that it is imperative for adults to come together and raise awareness about the dangers of subway surfing.
“It was just really traumatic,” Adams said, promising to do “a series of things to raise awareness.”
“You’re dumb, you’re young, you do things that are foolish,” he continued. “You know, I’ve done some foolish things as a young person. You feel invincible. This was really a terrible tragic incident with this young man.”
The NYPD says it doesn’t keep track of how many subway surfing busts it makes. But MTA data shows a sharp spike in incidents of people riding on top of, in-between or anywhere outside the train.
The number of such incidents more than quadrupled between 2021 and 2022, according to MTA figures. In 2021, there were 206 incidents. In 2022, there were 928.
Some observers blame social media, in part, for the trend.
“Oh yeah definitely,” Zackery’s brother, Wilson, 34, said of social media influence. “Because I wasn’t even hearing about it until recently.”
Zackery’s grandmother, Norma Garcia, 75, who lives in Florida, last saw her grandson about six months ago.
“I went to visit them in New York,” she said. “He took care of me and was very caring.”
When Zackery was born, Garcia came to New York City for three months to help his mother. She described him as “too smart, sometimes hyperactive. Very smart. Very smart.”
“He was always a good student,” Garcia said, noting Zackery liked astrology and at different points told her that he aspired to become a doctor or a police officer.
The incident was hauntingly similar to the death of Ka’Von Wooden, a 15-year-old boy who died riding atop a J train in December.
Wooden was subway surfing on a Manhattan-bound train as it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and approached the Delancey St./Essex St. station on the Lower East Side, police said.
He fell off the train and made contact with the third rail around 11:30 a.m. Dec. 1. He died at the scene.
His mother told the Daily News that Ka’Von was autistic and wouldn’t have done something so dangerous if others hadn’t dared him.
“It’s not something he would do on his own,” his mother Y’Vonda Maxwell, 53, said at the time. “He was a kid on the spectrum. He got in on the wrong crowd. He was bullied because he was autistic.”
In August, 15-year-old Hamza Mohamed lost an arm when he fell while trying to subway surf atop a Forest Hills-bound R train in the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave. station, cops said.
