Stepping into Zackery Nazario’s bedroom in the East Village, you’re immediately surrounded by the poignant echoes of a 15-year-old’s life.
This past summer, his Derek Jeter jersey, a child’s medium, still hung on his wall. His mother, Norma Nazario, recounted his passions: Slurpees from 7-Eleven, his beloved cat, endless history trivia, and Frank Sinatra’s Christmas tunes.
A fond smile touched her lips as she recalled Zackery’s last day of kindergarten, when he defiantly sported a spiky Mohawk. ‘I blew through two bottles of super-strong gel just to make it stick,’ she chuckled, a bittersweet memory.
But the room has remained untouched since February 20, 2023. That evening, Zackery lost his life while subway surfing – a perilous trend among teenagers who risk it all by climbing onto moving trains.
At 6:45 p.m. on that fateful day, court documents reveal Zackery was riding a Brooklyn-bound J train. As he turned to face his girlfriend, a low beam tragically struck his head. He fell between the cars, and the train ran him over.
Months prior to his death, Zackery had been openly documenting his dangerous hobby on social media. His Instagram showed him clutching the back of a speeding train in Brooklyn and confidently posing atop a J train as it neared the Williamsburg Bridge.
He belonged to an online community where teenagers shared ‘short films’ of stunts that would typically demand professional coordination in Hollywood. This dangerous pursuit is tragically lethal: NYPD reports indicate seven deaths last year from riding outside trains, the youngest victim just 11 years old.
Despite policies prohibiting such content, subway surfing videos proliferate on TikTok and Instagram. The New York Times found countless examples, filmed day and night, above and below ground. While some vanish quickly, others persist—like an Instagram video of a man in a construction vest performing jumping jacks on a moving train, or a two-year-old TikTok montage of shaky surfing clips set to ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’.
Teenagers involved in this subculture describe an insatiable draw: the adrenaline, the validation of social media likes, and the thrill of defying boundaries. Once hooked, they claim nothing else compares to the heart-pounding excitement.
Norma Nazario, a 54-year-old nurse who immigrated from Puerto Rico as a child, was unaware of her son’s involvement in subway surfing until his death. On that tragic day, Zackery told her he was going on a bike ride with his girlfriend. She even suggested a family dinner at P.F. Chang’s later.
As evening fell and Zackery remained absent, Norma’s calls and texts went unanswered. At 10 p.m., two detectives arrived at her door. They sat her on the couch, one gently taking her hand.
“He was doing what?” Norma recalled her disbelief.
Days later, at the Union Square police precinct, she collected Zackery’s last possessions: his chain necklace and a Nike cross-body bag adorned with winking emoticons, severely mangled from the accident.
Remarkably, his iPhone was returned to her, perfectly intact.
Zackery’s childhood was filled with summers at Yankee Stadium, cheering on his favorite team, and boogie boarding at Rockaway Beach. His mother remembers his deep fascination with the city, often seeing him research the history of its transit system and iconic buildings on YouTube.
After his funeral, Zackery’s friends filled his room with heartfelt notes. ‘He wasn’t a bad kid — he wasn’t a troublemaker who wanted to die,’ one friend shared in an interview, highlighting the tragic incomprehension surrounding his death.
Zackery’s phone, however, became a chilling portal into a hidden world of subway surfing content. Norma, who once believed social media was for harmless connections, was horrified to discover a vast ecosystem that she feels directly lured her son into danger. Within his digital footprint, she found what she interprets as a posthumous message, guiding her on how to channel her grief.
Last year, Norma filed a lawsuit in New York, alleging that TikTok and Instagram deliberately ‘targeted, goaded, and encouraged’ Zackery into this lethal activity. In a significant preliminary win this June, a judge permitted the case to move to discovery, despite fierce opposition from the social media giants’ legal teams. (Her claims against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority were dismissed.)
TikTok, while not commenting directly on Norma’s case, stated that its extensive trust and safety team proactively removes the vast majority of dangerous content before it garners views, in line with its policy against dangerous activities.
A Meta spokesperson expressed ‘disappointment’ over the ruling, asserting that it did not address the core merits of the case.
The Meta spokesperson added, ‘Subway surfing has been a long-standing challenge for leaders and transportation authorities. Videos promoting such dangerous acts violate our policies and are removed upon detection.’
For Norma Nazario, these responses feel like a stark shirking of responsibility. She now lives with a singular, four-word mission.
“To stop this nonsense,” she declared.
‘Insanely Dangerous’
The dark brown wooden door to Zackery’s bedroom bears poignant messages: ‘I miss u’ in black marker at eye level, and ‘I’ll see you on the other side brotherman’ scrawled in pink above the doorknob.
After the funeral, Norma allowed Zackery’s friends to fill his room with these farewells. For them, it’s still unfathomable that Zackery is truly gone. Friends remember him as an outgoing, inquisitive teenager constantly seeking excitement.
Born in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, Zackery later lived with his mother in a Manhattan public housing complex by the East River. He had a half-brother 19 years his senior. His father, Norma stated, was not involved in Zackery’s life at the time of his death, nor is he part of the lawsuit.
Court filings show Zackery received his first phone around age 12. His mother recalls him using it for Snapchat and playing ‘Subway Surfers’, a popular mobile game where an animated character collects coins by leaping onto train cars.
Norma diligently tried to monitor his social media, even sharing an Instagram account with him for a time. However, Zackery’s adolescent obsession with his phone became so intense that despite her efforts to confiscate and hide it, he always found it. Eventually, he created a new, secret Instagram account.
Court documents reveal screenshots from Zackery’s Instagram, illustrating how features like auto-generated music lyrics on the platform may have facilitated his creation of subway surfing content.
During the pandemic, Zackery developed a keen interest in the urban exploration community on social media, according to 18-year-old Alex Cutting, a friend and classmate from The Clinton School in Manhattan. ‘Urbexers,’ as they’re known, delve into abandoned structures and tunnels, sharing their findings online.
Alex was aware of Zackery’s occasional trips to abandoned train tracks in the Bronx. However, he grew concerned in the fall of 2022 when Zackery started posting subway surfing photos on Instagram. When Alex warned him of the ‘insanely dangerous’ nature of the activity, Zackery described an unparalleled rush, a feeling akin to Matthew McConaughey in a thrilling action film.
“Remember that scene in ‘Interstellar’ where he plunges through the black hole and everything shakes?” Alex recounted Zackery saying. “That’s exactly what it feels like to hang off the back of the L train, rocketing under the East River into Brooklyn.”
In the final year of his life, Zackery confided in friends about feeling down and struggling with relationship issues. Despite this, he held onto future aspirations: graduating high school and joining the Marines.
“He wasn’t a bad kid — he wasn’t a troublemaker who wanted to die,” emphasized Bek Metaliaj, 18, another high school friend.
Shortly before Zackery’s death, Bek recalled a heated argument in a bathroom stall over subway surfing. Zackery had begun associating more with a group of regular surfers, and Bek was deeply concerned for his safety. Zackery, however, was confident: ‘I know what I’m doing, I haven’t made a mistake yet,’ he insisted.
This overconfidence is a common thread among subway surfers, many of whom believe their intimate knowledge of the system will shield them from harm.
Terrell Ismail was a 14-year-old aspiring videographer when he first scaled a moving train. Like Zackery, he began with urban exploration before transitioning to subway surfing. He quickly learned that these videos on TikTok and Instagram could rack up hundreds of thousands of views.
“I’d see it online and think, ‘That’s beautiful,’” he shared in an interview. “’That’s a neat way of getting a scenic view.’”
Zackery’s Nike cross-body bag, mangled in the fatal accident, was found alongside his perfectly intact iPhone.
Tragically, shortly after his 15th birthday, Terrell suffered a devastating accident. While riding on top of a Manhattan-bound 7 train, he collided with an overpass in Queens, resulting in a traumatic brain injury that paralyzed the left side of his body. His father, Sammy Ismail, explained that the family is now desperately seeking a home-based physical therapist to allow them more time to work and fund his ongoing care.
Now 18, Terrell still encounters subway surfing videos online. “I comment, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that,’” he said. “’That’s going to ruin your life.’”
What Would Make Teens Stop?
The message is stark, delivered periodically through tinny subway speakers: “Ride inside, stay alive.”
This campaign, a revamped public information effort launched by New York Governor Kathy Hochul alongside the MTA and other agencies this summer, aims to highlight the extreme dangers of subway surfing. Yet, for Angel, a 15-year-old from Queens who asked not to reveal his full name due to the illegal nature of his activities, these warnings fall on deaf ears.
Angel often uses the very P.S.A. slogan, ‘Ride inside, stay alive,’ as a defiant caption for his own subway surfing videos. He and his friends hear these announcements constantly, he admits, and they simply laugh them off.
Beyond public service announcements, the MTA actively reports subway surfing videos to social media companies, leading to 1,800 removals this year alone. Since 2023, the NYPD has deployed drone cameras over high-risk subway stations, aiming to intercept surfers in real-time.
Over 100 individuals have been removed from trains this year for subway surfing, reported Kaz Daughtry, the city’s deputy mayor for public safety. Each call about another teen’s death from this activity leaves him ‘a little angry and annoyed,’ feeling ‘we really let that family down.’
Subway surfing videos often feature dramatic sunsets and sprawling city skylines, drawing thousands of views on TikTok and Instagram.
These clips frequently show surfers posing precariously, leaping between moving train cars, or dangling their feet off the back.
While subway surfing has a long history, dating back to the earliest days of New York City’s transit system, the death toll has surged in recent years. Joseph M. Gulotta, NYPD Chief of Transit, and other officials attribute this rise largely to social media. Last year, over two dozen New York state lawmakers sent a letter to Meta, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok, criticizing them for failing to remove dangerous subway surfing content as promised.
Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie was prompted to send the letter after an Instagram Reel of a person riding on a train roof appeared in his own feed. ‘If I, a geriatric millennial, am seeing this on my phone, our young people are undoubtedly exposed,’ he remarked.
Despite the companies’ claims that such videos are forbidden and that searches for ‘subway surfing’ yield safety warnings rather than results, Norma Nazario’s experience proved otherwise: the content remains distressingly easy to locate.
‘No One Is Stepping Up’
Upon opening Zackery’s phone, Norma found a trove of ‘mind-blowing’ content: videos filmed inside subway tunnels, footage of derelict stations, and snapshots of Zackery riding on the back and tops of trains.
Court documents include screenshots presented by Norma’s lawyers, allegedly showing Instagram posts that appeared in Zackery’s feed. These include a photo seemingly taken from the back of an underground train with the caption ‘Midnight run,’ and an image of a man mid-leap across tracks with a train in the background.
Norma Nazario contacted attorney Matthew Bergman after seeing his appearance on a ’60 Minutes’ segment, where he represented the Spence family in their ongoing lawsuit against Meta, alleging Instagram contributed to their 12-year-old daughter’s hospitalization for depression and an eating disorder.
Cases similar to Norma Nazario’s often face significant hurdles due to a federal law protecting online platforms from liability for user-generated content.
“People constantly ask, ‘Isn’t it the parent’s responsibility?’” remarked Matthew Bergman, a former asbestos lawyer who shifted to suing tech companies in 2021. He contends that even the most vigilant parents are outmatched by algorithmic feeds engineered to capture and retain children’s attention at all costs.
“We are completely transparent: Zackery made a profoundly bad decision,” Bergman stated. “Teenagers make bad decisions, but they don’t deserve to die for them.”
Legal experts caution that such cases usually falter due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. This federal law has, since the internet’s infancy, shielded online platforms from accountability for content posted by their users.
However, some see a potential shift. Alan Z. Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, notes that over the past five years, courts have shown a greater inclination to interpret this protection more narrowly. While these cases remain unpredictable, he believes a victory for Norma Nazario is not inconceivable.
As teenage casualties mount, ‘it becomes incredibly difficult — and rightly so, I believe — for judges to simply declare, “That’s the unavoidable cost of a vibrant internet,”‘ he explained. A jury verdict in Norma’s favor, he added, ‘would have enormous implications for the trillion-dollar social media industry.’
Yet, even a legal triumph would not restore Norma’s son. His tabby cat, Luna, with her piercing green eyes, still curls up in Zackery’s room, perpetually awaiting the return of the teenager who once adored her.
Norma Nazario, however, continues her tireless advocacy, speaking to legislator after legislator about the perils of subway surfing, desperately hoping that her profound grief will compel someone to act and prevent another child from suffering Zackery’s fate.
“No one is stepping up,” she reiterated, a resolute conviction in her voice. “I know he would want me to do that.”