A TikTok stunt that caused as 16-year-old boy to fall 50 feet and become trapped inside a shaft on the Queensboro Bridge has resulted in the arrest of two of his companions, who allegedly left him there to die.
A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, both boys, have been arrested and charged for their alleged roles in the stunt gone wrong on Monday evening, an NYPD spokesperson told the New York Post on Thursday.
The younger teen has been charged with reckless endangerment and criminal trespassing, and the older boy with criminal trespassing, police said.
Officers responded to a 911 call on the Queens end of the East River bridge around 5:45 p.m. Monday and found the 16-year-old identified as Frankie Allocca from Lynbrook, Long Island stuck inside the shaft, police said.
The boy was filming a stunt on the bridge to post on TikTok when he fell, a source told the Post.
His mother, Vanessa Tineo, told the Gothamist her son and his friends were participating in a risky activity called “urban exploration” or “urbex” where practitioners try to probe off-limits infrastructure, posting their thrills on social media like TikTok and Instagram.
She told the news outlet in its story Friday that her son has been in and out of consciousness since the incident and has some brain trauma.
But what happened before the emergency was reported, according to a petition on change.org calling for the arrest of the boy’s “friends,” if true, falls into the realm psychopathic lack of empathy in the pursuit of thrill seeking — or simply some bad life-threatening decisions made by a couple of clueless kids.
According to the petition:
Instead of immediately calling for help, Frankie’s “friends” and others proceeded to take videos of Frankie screaming their names in agony and sending it to people online. Frankie’s “friends” then removed Frankie’s cell phone from him in order to prevent Frankie from calling emergency services. His “friends” then fled the scene.
Frankie’s “friends” then proceeded to go back to their homes, leaving Frankie inside the bridge shaft suffering and dying. Multiple hours later, an anonymous woman who saw the video contacted authorities which then resulted in Frankie’s rescue hours later. The FDNY had to search each shaftway of the Queensboro bridge until they found Frankie’s shoe and blood. None of the people involved in the accident including all of the “friends” involved were present at the rescue.
“Nobody deserves to be abandoned and left to die during the worst and most traumatic moment of their life,” added the petition, which garnered more than 1,200 signatures at the time of publication.
A GoFundMe for Frankie’s recovery, which has raised almost $15,000, stated the teen was hypothermic, and he lost a lot of blood during the incident and faces “a long road of surgeries, recovery, and rehabilitation.”
“His survival is nothing short of a miracle,” the fundraiser for his family said.
Both TikTok and Instagram have been criticized in recent years for allowing posts of dangerous stunts that reportedly have resulted in 35,000 emergency room visits and one asphyxiation game that has killed more than 100 people, according to a study by a California personal injury law firm.
Nearly a third of the users of TikTok were between the ages of 13 and 24.
“This is problematic given that teens’ prefrontal cortexes are not fully developed, making them more susceptible to peer pressure and suggestion — the whole gist of the dangerous challenges that proliferate on social media,” the Post reported in covering the study last year.
TikTok told the tabloid in November that they monitor the site for “dangerous behavior with the safety of our community as a priority” and also “have blocked searches for years to help discourage copycat behavior.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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