Police say a 17-Year-Old Boy Fell to his Death in an Apparent Social Media Stunt
Well, well, well. Another day, another social media daredevil dying for the ‘gram.
This weekend in Los Angeles, a 17-year-old boy thought it would be a fantastic idea to climb onto one of the arches of the brand new $588-million 6th Street Viaduct just so he could post about it on social media.
Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for us because we get to write this article), he slipped and fell to his death. Yes, you read that correctly: HE FELL TO HIS DEATH.
According to Police Chief Michel Moore (not Michael Moore – that’s a different guy), officers were called to the bridge around 2 am on Saturday and found the teen at the base of one of its beautiful arches with his phone still clutched in his hand like some kind of modern-day Icarus.
The police chief went on explain “the young man was climbing upon one of the arches” when “he lost his footing” (read: DIED).
It’s not entirely clear what platform this absolute genius was planning on posting his daring escapade too – Instagram? TikTok? Facebook? – but let’s hope wherever it is had filters good enough to make up for how tragically stupid and pointless this whole thing turned out.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, apparently our dearly departed daredevil isn’t even getting any sympathy from city officials!
Surely there must have been something wrong with their supply of thoughts n’ prayers this week because those seem noticeably absent as they instead pointed out how many other tragedies have taken place at or near that bridge recently including street racing (!?), graffiti vandalism (!!?), illegal takeovers (?!!) AND someone being fatally shot during unauthorized filming of a music video??!
“Tragically we see that location, while it has spawned a great deal of pride in Los Angeles,” said Chief Moore during a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission. “It has also unfortunately served as a backdrop now for tragedies such as this…Our added patrols will continue at that location … to counter such reckless actions.”
We’re not sure what’s stranger: That people have convinced themselves doing death-defying stunts is worth risking their own lives or the fact that city officials are trying to use this tragedy as an opportunity get some easy press about how hard they’re cracking down on illegal street racing and non-consensual music video shoots.
Either way one thing is abundantly clear: we need more secure gates around these bridges because clearly posting selfies on high structures near traffic isn’t enough of a deterrent for certain people.
In conclusion, if you want us to incorporate your social media content into any news coverage, please do so by sending it our way after verifying your stupidity with local law enforcement first. Thank you.
