As paramedics pulled the body of 14-year-old subway surfer Briyan Crespo from a Brooklyn rail bed, his phone rang over and over as his worried mother tried to reach him.
“He wasn’t picking up,” Briyan’s devastated mom, Sonia, speaking in Spanish, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “I left messages saying, ‘Where are you? Answer me!’”
Crespo was riding atop a Manhattan-bound L train with friend Widinson Garcia, also 14, on Thursday when the pair were knocked to the tracks as their car entered the Bushwick-Aberdeen station shortly before 2 p.m. ET.
“One of Briyan’s friends was saying, ‘Get on, come on!’” said Sonia, who talked to friends of her son who where there when he was killed.
“He didn’t want to at first and [one friend] was telling him not to. But he went along with it.”
The Intermediate School 93 in Ridgewood, Queens, was hosting field day events on Thursday but Briyan skipped school with his mother’s blessing, saying he was headed to a friend’s house.
As he left home that morning, he assured his mom he would be home that afternoon.
“He said, ‘We’re going to eat and then I’ll come home,’” Crespo’s mother recalled Sunday. “I said ‘OK, Papi, but be back soon.’”
As the hours rolled by and Briyan failed to check in his mom opened the location app on her phone and saw he was nowhere near his friend’s Ridgewood home.
“It said he was in Bushwick,” she said. “He hadn’t said he was going there.”
The confusion Sonia felt soon turned to fear as her repeated texts and voice messages went unanswered.
“I just wanted to know he was OK,” she said.
It was around 2 p.m. ET when she got the call every parent fears.
“The police called and told me that it happened,” she said.
When the mom arrived at the scene, first responders said they had found two boys, one clinging to life and the other already perished — but it wasn’t clear who was who.
“They told me they didn’t know who was who but that my son was in the hospital or had passed,” said Sonia.
The faint hope she felt upon her arrival at the scene turned to horror as it became clear her son was the boy who died.
“I told them about my son and they determined it was him,” Sonia recounted.
The other teen was taken to Cohen Children’s Medical Center and has since stabilized.
His father, speaking to CBS News through a translator, said Widinson had just graduated on Wednesday.
“When his son woke up, he told his dad about the incident, that he was on the train and his friends told him to get down, but it was too late,” the translator said. “Even [the teenager who died] was like a son to him.
“They were like brothers and knew each other since they were young.”
Briyan — who was due to graduate eighth grade in four days — worked hard in school, never got in trouble and had a bright future ahead of him, his mom said.
“He was a good kid, a smart student, often recognized with honors,” said Sonia. “He never had any problems in school, anything where someone might say, ‘Briyan is a bad kid.’ Never, never, never.”
Always keen to have a little money in his pocket, Crespo ran a small sneaker business.
“He would buy and sell shoes and save all that money,” the grieving mother explained. “He wanted to start working next year. He liked having his own spending money.”
Briyan dreamed of living a “Miami Vice” lifestyle.
“He wanted to be a detective,” Sonia said. “He was going to move to California and buy himself a Lamborghini and have his own house.”
But that dream was destroyed in a moment of youthful recklessness and peer pressure, according to the mother, who said his friends egged him onto the top of the fatal train.
Now she hopes his death will provide a lesson to others.
His friends, meanwhile, gathered in grief Sunday at a Queens playground.
Sherly, 15, knew both victims and brought a candle and note for Briyan.
“They are really great kids and Briyan didn’t deserve to pass away,” Sherly said. “We understand that Briyan’s in a better place but we honestly wish he was here with us because losing a friend is hard and we honestly hope that Widinson honestly gets better...We’re praying every day for both of them so that they both know that we care and love them as their friends.”
Sherly said a group of friends, including her and the boys, went to Coney Island Monday, the trip providing her a lasting happy memory.
Authorities have been struggling with how to successfully discourage youths from subway surfing, a deadly and illegal stunt fueled by social media.
“We need to tell the youth, with this that’s happened, not to do this and not to let themselves be influenced by friends,” Sonia said.
“Think a thousand times before you do something, because you’re too young to leave this earth. You have a whole life ahead of you.”
In a separate interview with WABC7NY, Widinson’s cousin, Erika, 17, said she can’t understand why he would take part in something so risky.
“He’s like — How do I say? — he likes to do things dangerous like that,” Erika said,
Investigators believe the boys entered the subway at Broadway Junction in East New York and climbed to the roof of the L train, which runs above ground at that station.
The boys were struck as the train headed underground into the Bushwick-Aberdeen station, according to NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper.
“It was as the train was entering the tunnel that we believe they made contact, knocking them off the top of the train,” he said.
Briyan’s death follows that of Zackery Nazario, 15, who was killed in February while subway surfing atop a train as it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge while his girlfriend watched in horror.
Another 15-year-old, Ka’Von Wooden, was killed in December as he rode on top of a train approaching the Delancey St./Essex St. station on the Lower East Side, where he fell under and hit the third rail.
Mayor Adams blamed the deaths on apps like TikToK, where kids post videos of themselves subway surfing in pursuit of internet fame.
“Subway surfing kills. It kills,” Adams said during a press conference at the Bushwick-Aberdeen station on Thursday. “You go online right now, put ‘New York City subway surfing’ — you will see some of what our young people are watching.”
But as authorities plead for straphangers to ride inside the train, daredevils continue to perform their dangerous stunts on the outside, according to MTA data.
In February, 52 people were caught riding outside of a subway car, according to MTA spokesman Michael Cortez. In January, 58 people were found riding outside the train. He could not immediately provide more recent data.
