A 16-year-old boy fell 50 feet down a shaft on the Queensboro bridge in New York City while apparently filming an urban exploration video for TikTok.
Authorities said the teen fell into a three-foot by three-foot buttress while climbing the bridge with friends on Monday, prompting a huge rescue operation that took place around 9pm.
According to the New York City Fire Department (FDNY), about ten pieces of apparatus and 75 first responders were involved in the rescue effort.
During a press briefing, FDNY Deputy Chief Nicholas Corrado said: ‘This was a confined-space operation, which is a very difficult, time-consuming, manpower-intensive operation.
‘It involves high-angle equipment, ropes, we have to monitor the air, and create high points.’
Firefighters managed to put the injured teen in a harness and lower him to safety before rushing him to New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell, where he is in critical but stable condition, according to authorities.
Sources told the New York Post that the teen had been filming a stunt for TikTok, and videos shared on Reddit suggested that he and his friends were filming urban exploration content.
Although he had been climbing with friends, they were not the ones who called police about the fall, according to an unnamed young woman who spoke with ABC7.
A 16-year-old boy was rescued by firefighters after falling 50 feet down a shaft in the Queensboro Bridge in New York City. He is pictured being lowered to safety
The teen had apparently been filming a stunt for TikTok, according to sources who spoke with the New York Post. Firefighters are pictured climbing the buttress to get to the teen
The New York City Fire Department said the rescue involved around ten pieces of apparatus and 75 first responders. The chaotic rescue scene is pictured
The woman told the outlet that she had learned of the accident around 5pm after videos began circulating in WhatsApp group chats. She is the one who alerted authorities, she said.
‘I texted them anonymously. I didn’t know really what to do either because I wasn’t there. But these kids are panicking, and I was like, if there’s someone in critical danger, I need to help,’ the young woman told ABC7.
She also told the outlet that the teen’s friends had abandoned him and fled after the fall.
After the young woman reported what happened, firefighters spent hours searching the bridge buttress by buttress.
Firefighter Khalid Lee told ABC7 that he eventually found a shoe and blood at the base of one of those buttresses.
‘I just relayed that information to the rest of the members on the scene so we could all get the ball rolling on what we were going to use to retrieve this victim once we laid eyes on him,’ Lee told the outlet.
‘He was just mumbling from the severe trauma that he experienced,’ the firefighter added.
Between the time that police were informed of the fall and the teen being rescued, at least four hours had passed, but he was likely in the shaft for even longer because the others he was climbing with did not immediately report what happened.
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The fall was reported around 5pm, and the rescue occurred around 9pm because authorities had to search the bridge one buttress at a time. Firefighters are pictured after the correct buttress was located
The people with whom teen was climbing did not immediately report the fall, so he was likely in the shaft for more than four hours. Firefighters are pictured during the rescue operation
A user in the New York City Reddit community posted a screen recording of the groupchats where videos of the accident were shared and discussed, as well as a link to a Google Drive folder with some additional videos and screenshots.
The user identified the teen’s name as Frankie and claimed that he may have been pushed into the shaft by one of the people he was climbing with.
The user also said that one of the people Frankie was climbing with had taken his phone and thrown it into a sewer. The user added that Frankie was verbally abused by the others after the fall as well.
In one of the videos in the Google Drive folder, the person recording can be heard saying: ‘I have his phone. His bag is still in the f***ing bridge.’
Another video shared in the folder shows the group of teens climbing through one of the bridge’s buttresses, clambering through small openings and going up and down ladders.
At the tail end of the video, the person recording can be seen making it back down to the bridge’s road level.
He then takes out his phone and opens some messages before saying in a panicked voice: ‘Bro, Frankie’s dead! Frankie is f***cking dead! Oh my God, bro, no, no!’
