Increase in ‘subway surfing’ deaths prompts calls for safeguards

Metro officials said the agency made no changes after a 15-year-old died this summer. Accidents and deaths have also spiked in New York City.

By Joe Heim
August 16, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT



Desikan Thirunarayanapuram, left, and Vaishali Honawar with a portrait of their son, Jay, at their home in Silver Spring, Md., on Monday. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)

Vaishali Honawar was alone in her Silver Spring, Md., home on June 20 when she heard the doorbell ring at 9:45 p.m. Her husband, Desikan Thirunarayanapuram, a Washington Post editor, was at work. The couple had been trying to reach their son, Jay, but he hadn’t responded to texts or phone calls, and Honawar was beginning to worry. ... When she opened the door and saw two Metro Transit police detectives standing outside, a wave of panic swept over her. ... “Can we come in and visit with you?” one asked.

The detectives sat down on a couch and quietly told her that Jay was found next to the Metro tracks near the Rhode Island Avenue station that afternoon. They said it appeared he had been videotaping himself for social media when he slipped while riding atop a Metro train, a practice known as subway surfing — an escalating problem for some major transit agencies. ... Jay Thirunarayanapuram, a gifted artist who had just completed his freshman year at Albert Einstein High School, died five days after he turned 15.

Honawar called her husband, who raced home in a fog of tears and disbelief. This couldn’t be real, the couple thought. When can we see him? They’ve made a mistake. ... But there was no mistake. The smiling, outgoing boy they had adopted from India when he was 6 and brought to their Maryland home was gone.

[ Service on part of Metro’s Red Line suspended after person struck by train ]

Jay’s parents acknowledge he was a victim of his own risky behavior. He liked to explore and take chances. Danger had appealed to him after growing up in Mumbai with little oversight and he had an ingrained sense of fearlessness. But in recent months, Jay had gone too far and was getting into trouble. They had him in therapy, but in some ways, it seemed, he could not be reached. ... But they also said Metro should have more restrictions and warning systems in place, such as alarms or cameras, to make it harder for people to access dangerous areas on trains. Like some other parents who have lost children to subway surfing, they are calling on social media platforms to remove subway surfing videos from their sites.

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A Metro train pulls up to the Naylor Road station. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post)

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By Joe Heim
Joe Heim joined The Washington Post in 1999. He is a staff writer for the Metro section. Twitter https://twitter.com/JoeHeim