A Hispanic man who was injured while surfing the New York subway has been showing signs of recovery, but family members believe he will never walk again.
As 14-year-old Widinson Garcia is hooked up to tubes and wires at a Queens medical center, the family says the young daredevil began a slow road to recovery.
“He is conscious, he can talk,” said an aunt. “We would like to think that she will have a good recovery.”
Garcia is the sole survivor of the dangerous stunt that has claimed the life of 14-year-old Briyan Crespo after the teens were struck while riding on top of a Manhattan-bound L train as it approached Bushwick Ave. .-Aberdeen Street station in Brooklyn in June, the authorities reported.
The two eighth-graders skipped school when they got the idea to climb on the roof of the train at Broadway Junction in East New York, where the tracks rise above the ground, at 2:00 p.m. on June 22.
Detectives believed the children were struck as the train went down into the tunnel in front of the Bushwick Ave.-Aberdeen Street station, less than one stop away, according to New York Police Transit Chief Michael Kemper. .
Rescuers found the bodies of the children lying on the platform, one dead and the other seriously injured, but it wasn’t until Crespo’s mother arrived at the scene that the young man had not survived, the Daily News reported.
“They told me that they didn’t know who was who, but that my son was in the hospital or had died,” Sonia said. “I spoke to them about my son and they determined that [Briyan había muerto]”.
Garcia was also transported by paramedics to Cohen Children’s Medical Center in Queens in what Kemper described as a “very serious condition with severe trauma to his body.”
Since Garcia regained consciousness, family members have worked every day to lift his spirits. However, his injuries took a heavy toll on what had been a lively boy, according to his aunt.
“I just tried to joke with him,” he said. “He’s just tired.”
A GoFundMe page was created to support Garcia’s family and pay his medical bills, he noted that the young man may never walk again.
“She probably won’t be able to walk and will need a lot of help,” the GoFundMe post read.
The New York subway train surfing stunt that badly injured Garcia and took Crespo’s life preceded the death of Jevon Fraser who died when he sustained a fatal head injury after falling from a moving carriage near of Queens Boulevard and 33rd Street in Sunnyside Thursday night.
This event follows the death of 15-year-old Zackery Nazario, who was killed in February while riding the subway atop a train crossing the Williamsburg Bridge.
For his part, Mayor Eric Adams blamed social networks like TikTok, where minors post videos of themselves doing stunts in the hope of gaining relevance on the Internet.
“Surfing in the subway kills. It kills,” Adams said during a press conference at Bushwick-Aberdeen station last month. “Go online right now, put on ‘New York City Subway Surfing’ – you’ll see some of what our youth are seeing.”
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