Teens charged in connection with 'dangerous' social media car stunts: DA
One incident left a person dead and another with permanent brain damage.
Two teenagers accused of driving recklessly while attempting "dangerous social media challenges" have been criminally charged in stunts that left one person dead and another with permanent brain damage, prosecutors in Pennsylvania said Tuesday.
The charges stem from separate incidents that both occurred in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania, earlier this year.
"We have had two criminal investigations involving the dangerous and reckless use of an automobile to create what are known as stunt challenges," Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta said during a press briefing on Tuesday announcing the charges. "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."
In one incident, which occurred early on June 1, a 17-year-old boy was sitting on top of an upside-down folding table being pulled using a rope by a vehicle driven by his friend in a high school parking lot, Baratta said.
"Unfortunately, the juvenile driver recklessly operated the vehicle at a significant speed such that it whipped the rider sitting on the table into another parked vehicle, resulting in the death of the 17-year-old," Baratta said.
The alleged 17-year-old driver in that case faces charges in juvenile court, including involuntary manslaughter, the district attorney said.
In the other incident, in March, a 20-year-old woman was "surfing" on the back of a vehicle being driven by her friend in a parking lot, according to Baratta.
"Unfortunately, the friend was thrown from the moving vehicle and received catastrophic head injuries that will be permanent in nature," Baratta said.
The alleged 19-year-old driver in that incident faces charges including aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle, careless driving and persons hanging on a vehicle, the district attorney said.
"They were not planning to injure their victims," Baratta said of the two teens charged. "However, in both incidents, the action of these drivers were so grossly negligent and reckless that it constituted a criminal, culpable state of mind."
Prosecutors did not identify either defendant or victim in the cases. Baratta said both drivers were attempting social media challenges, including ones from TikTok.
In a statement to ABC News, a TikTok spokesperson said content that "promotes dangerous behavior which may lead to serious injury" will be removed from the platform.
"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," the spokesperson said.
According to the spokesperson, between January and March, 99.8% of the videos removed for violating TikTok's "dangerous activities and challenges policy" were taken down proactively, with 92.4% of them receiving no views.
Baratta said he anticipates that both cases will be resolved without going to trial. If the teens, who are both first-time offenders, complete court-supervised programs, they could later ask that their criminal charges be expunged, he said.
The district attorney said the parents of the victims "struggled a lot" with the cases. They "expressed disappointment" in both their children and their children's friends for participating in the "stunt challenges," and ultimately wanted charges to be brought for accountability and to serve as a deterrent, he said.
"These parents do not want other families to go through the same horror and pain that they had to endure," Baratta said. "Ultimately, there needed to be accountability for the death and the permanent brain injury to these two victims."
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