Two charged as social media trends leave teen dead and 20-year-old with permanent 'catastrophic head injuries'
Two teenagers have been charged after a 17-year-old boy was killed and a 20-year-old woman was left with permanent ‘catastrophic head injuries’ while attempting dangerous ‘social media challenges’ involving their cars.
Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta announced the charges, which came about as a result of two separate incidents, at a news conference on Tuesday (September 23). He said the county has been investigating "the dangerous and reckless use" of vehicles for social media "stunt challenges”.
In the first case, a 17-year-old boy was charged with involuntary manslaughter after a suspected attempt at a social media challenge which he and his name late friend performed in June at a school car park.
The teen, who has not been named, is accused of using a rope to tie an upside-down folding table to the back of his vehicle and then pulling that table through the car park while his friend, also 17, rode on top of the table.
The driver allegedly "recklessly operated his vehicle at significant speed such that it whipped the rider sitting on the table into another parked vehicle," and the other boy died, Baratta said.
In a second incident, a 19-year-old woman, who has also not been named, has been charged with aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle, careless driving and persons hanging on a vehicle.
She was allegedly driving while her female friend, aged 20, stood on the boot to attempt to "surf" on the moving car in a car park near William Penn Highway, Baratta said. "Unfortunately, the friend was thrown from the moving vehicle and received catastrophic head injuries that will be permanent in nature," Baratta said. The 19-year-old driver has been charged with aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle, careless driving and persons hanging on a vehicle.
Baratta said that while the investigations in both cases remain open, officials have determined that neither of the drivers had "criminogenic thinking" and so, hopefully, they can be held accountable and then have their charges expunged. "They were not planning to injure their victim," he said of the accused. "However, in both incidents, the action of these drivers were so grossly negligent and reckless that it constituted criminal, culpable state of mind."
He added that the parents of the victims believe that they had "agreed to participate" in so-called "TikTok challenges." He went on: "I promised these families that in return for the admission by these drivers that they engaged in this criminally reckless behaviour, 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.”
Baratta also said: “It's important for the public to understand that these challenges can have severe, real-world consequences, creating significant risk to participants and sometimes the bystanders as well.”
He said that both drivers would be first-time offenders, if convicted, and that he does not anticipate that there will be a trial. The victims have also not been named offically, but local media identified the 17-year-old male victim as David Jacob Nagy.
A TikTok spokesperson said that it takes steps to curb the spread of content related to these challenges. They told ABC News that content that "promotes dangerous behaviour which may lead to serious injury" is removed from the platform. They added: “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."