A 17-year-old boy fell to his death this weekend while climbing a Los Angeles bridge in an apparent social media stunt, police said.
Police were sent to the 6th Street Viaduct around 2 a.m. Saturday and found the boy, who was pronounced dead at a hospital. His name wasn’t immediately released.
The teen slipped and fell “when climbing upon one of the arches, in order to post, apparently, a social media broadcast,” Police Chief Michel Moore said Tuesday during a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission.
The bridge opened last July. The $588-million span, which replaced an 84-year-old Art Deco span, runs 3,500 feet over the concrete-lined Los Angeles River and connects downtown to the historic Eastside.
The bridge, which has thousands of LED lights and views of LA’s skyline, is the largest and most expensive span ever built in the city. It was designed to become a city landmark.
But the bridge has been a frequent target of burnouts, sideshows, takeovers, and other illegal activity, such as a person getting a haircut in the middle of the road, CBS Los Angeles reported. As a result, authorities closed the bridge for several days.
After those incidents, police launched a traffic enforcement operation, CBS Los Angeles reported. The LA City Council’s Public Works Committee recommended that the council approve more than $700,000 to continue removing graffiti on the bridge.
A man was also fatally shot on the bridge in January during unauthorized filming of a music video.
“Tragically we see that location, while it has spawned a great deal of pride in Los Angeles, it has also unfortunately served as a backdrop now for tragedies such as this,” Moore told the Police Commission. “Our added patrols will continue at that location … to counter such reckless actions.”
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