Another teen died while attempting a social media stunt called “train surfing,” near the Daly City Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station around 9:30 a.m. Feb. 11, according to local media reports.
The boy was attempting to ride on top of a moving train to record a video, as was 19-year-old Daniel Baran who died Jan. 29 trying to do the same.
Both deaths happened between the Daly City and Balboa Park BART stations, according to police log entries sent to The Epoch Times by a BART spokesperson.
The mother of the boy who died in the latest incident, who wished to remain anonymous, told the San Francisco Standard—an online news organization—that her son was 15 and that she had recently restricted him from posting on Instagram after he shared a video doing the same stunt.
In a more recent Instagram post, he was also seen sitting atop San Francisco’s Third Street Bridge with sushi, his mother told the Standard.
She said the video of him riding atop a train became popular on social media, which fueled his desire to perform dangerous stunts for attention, such as scaling buildings.
Gateway Charter School in San Francisco confirmed the teenager as one of their students.
“We received the heartbreaking news that one of our students died on Sunday,” local television station KTVU reported interim Executive Director Aaron Watson said in a statement. “We remain in touch with the family and have taken steps to provide support and resources for our students as we move through this difficult time as a community.”
Following the recent incident, a user on Reddit who said they were a transit worker discouraged others from doing the same.
“No train operator deserves being haunted by the results of some individual’s stupidity, and a sense of guilt that follows. And no parent deserves to lose their kid doing something as boneheaded as this,” the post read.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency—which oversees parking, traffic, railways and taxicabs in San Francisco—did not return a request for comment on deadline.
But a spokesperson told KTVU in a statement that measures are being taken to address the issue, including calling out social media companies that allow dangerous stunts to be shared online.
“As videos and photos of so-called ’surfing' are spread by traditional and social media, too many kids are paying with their lives. ... We strongly discourage these reckless acts and urge media platforms to stop amplifying the content fueling them,” reads the statement.
