A teen has been killed and a 20-year-old has sustained life-changing injuries after attempting the latest TikTok challenge.
Pennsylvania’s Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta told press on Tuesday that social media challenges involving vehicles have become a local problem recently. He said the county has been investigating “the dangerous and reckless use” of vehicles for what he calls “stunt challenges.” These challenges have sadly already claimed one life.
The first case he brought up was that of an unidentified 17-year-old who sadly died after an incident at Freedom High School‘s parking lot. Per reports from back in June, a teen boy tied an upside-down folding table to the back of his car with a rope, while his friend — who was also 17 — rode on top of it like a surfboard. The teen who was driving is accused of “recklessly operated his vehicle at significant speed such that it whipped the rider sitting on the table into another parked vehicle.” His friend on the table was killed. So, so sad.
Another case that Baratta spoke about was from back in March, in which a similar incident occurred. A 19-year-old girl allegedly drove her car around a parking lot near William Penn Highway while her 20-year-old pal used the trunk to “surf” on the moving vehicle. The DA said:
“Unfortunately, the friend was thrown from the moving vehicle and received catastrophic head injuries that will be permanent in nature.”
Just horrible…
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In the first case, the surviving 17-year-old was charged with involuntary manslaughter, while the 19-year-old from the second case was charged with aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle, careless driving, and persons hanging on a vehicle. Both cases are still under investigation, but Baratta did say neither teen had “criminogenic thinking” — so he hopes those charges can be expunged after they’ve been held accountable.
Per Baratta, the victims’ parents say their kids had “agreed to participate” in the “TikTok challenges” — and everyone needs to be better educated about the consequences of these actions more than they need prison:
“They were not planning to injure their victim. However, in both incidents, the action of these drivers were so grossly negligent and reckless that it constituted criminal, culpable state of mind … I promised these families that in return for the admission by these drivers that they engaged in this criminally reckless behavior, there will be public accountability and that after a successful completion of a period of supervision, these defendants will have the opportunity to ask that their criminal charges be expunged.”
He also said he doesn’t expect a trial because the two drivers were first-time offenders. It sounds like horrifically bad judgment that led to some tragic accidents. None of the young people involved have been identified through law enforcement. But local outlet WXTF did identify the deceased 17-year-old as David Nagy.
As for TikTok’s side of things, a spokesperson for the social platform told ABC that they remove all content that “promotes dangerous behavior which may lead to serious injury”:
“To further discourage such content from being posted or replicated, we redirect related searches such as ‘table surfing’ to our resources support page for online challenges … 99.8% of the videos removed for violating TikTok’s dangerous activities and challenges policy were taken down proactively, with 92.4% of them receiving no views.”
Our heart goes out to these families who lost their children. This is such a sobering reminder to not attempt dangerous things just because you see someone doing them online. The outcome could always be just as tragic as these were.
May the victims rest in peace.
[Image via MEGA/WENN]
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