Dangerous Social Media Challenges Leave 17-Year-Old Dead and 20-Year-Old with Permanent ‘Catastrophic Head Injuries’: Authorities

Two Pennsylvania teens have been charged following incidents that left one 17-year-old dead and a 20-year-old with permanent catastrophic head injuries during dangerous social media stunts involving cars, authorities said.

Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta announced the charges at a news conference on Tuesday, Sept. 23.

Baratta said the county has been investigating “the dangerous and reckless use” of vehicles for these so-called “stunt challenges” on TikTok and Instagram.

“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,” he said.

In the first case, a 17-year-old boy was charged with involuntary manslaughter related to an alleged social media challenge in June at the Freedom High School parking lot.

The teen is accused of tying an upside-down folding table to the back of his vehicle with a rope and pulling it through the parking lot while a male friend, also 17, rode on top of the table.

The driver allegedly “recklessly operated his vehicle at significant speed such that it whipped the rider sitting on the table into another parked vehicle,” killing the other boy, Baratta said.

In a second incident in March, a 19-year-old female was allegedly driving while a 20-year-old female friend stood on the trunk to “surf” on the moving car in a parking lot near William Penn Highway, Baratta said.

“Unfortunately, the friend was thrown from the moving vehicle and received catastrophic head injuries that will be permanent in nature,” he said.

The 19-year-old driver has been charged with aggravated assault, aggravated assault by vehicle, careless driving, and persons hanging on a vehicle.

Baratta noted that while investigations in both cases remain open, officials have determined that neither driver demonstrated “criminogenic thinking,” meaning the hope is they can be held accountable and later have their charges expunged.

“They were not planning to injure their victim,” he said. “However, in both incidents, the actions of these drivers were so grossly negligent and reckless that it constituted criminal, culpable state of mind.”

He added that the parents of the victims indicated the participants had “agreed to participate” in the so-called social media challenges.

“I promised these families that in return for the admission by these drivers that they engaged in this criminally reckless behavior, there will be public accountability and that after a successful completion of a period of supervision, these defendants will have the opportunity to ask that their criminal charges be expunged,” Baratta said.

Both drivers would be first-time offenders if convicted, and Baratta does not anticipate a trial.

The teen drivers have not been publicly identified.

The victims’ names have not been released by officials, but the 17-year-old who died was identified as David Nagy by local station WXTF.

TikTok said it takes steps to curb the spread of content related to these challenges.

A TikTok spokesperson told PEOPLE that content that “promotes dangerous behavior which may lead to serious injury” is 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 TikTok, 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.”