Jumping a subway turnstile in Queens, New York, didn’t go as planned, leaving an intoxicated man dead with a snapped neck. Surveillance video, described as “horrifying,” captured the demise of someone dying to save $2.75 in transit costs.
Atp bruh just pay 🤦🏾♂️
— 2° (@surfeyy2) January 3, 2022
Neck breaking fall
Anarchist Christopher De La Cruz ignored the law to save some money and it cost him his life. The 28-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene with a broken neck.
The incident happened around 6:45 a.m. Sunday, at the Forest Hills-71st Avenue train station in Queens.
Video clearly shows that De La Cruz broke his neck trying to illegally jump over the station turnstile and he took more than one try doing it. “He initially falls and appears to drop his phone.”
He stumbled back after the first try “before repeatedly trying to hop over another turnstile.” The last try he made it over. He won’t be doing it again.
“On the final attempt, De La Cruz can be seen hoisting himself up — but losing his balance and flipping over the barrier.” Then, he “came crashing down onto his head and broke his neck.”
The film clearly shows De La Cruz lying motionless between the turnstiles immediately afterward. An autopsy has been scheduled to “determine his exact cause of death.”
On his way to work
From what the press was able to piece together, De La Cruz was “on his way to work” which means he should have had the money to pay his fare, he just didn’t want to. His father, Jose De La Cruz, was devastated by the news.
“What can I say? He did a mistake,” he told reporters. The Forest Hills police report states, he “fell headfirst onto the concrete and “broke his neck on impact.”
The medics “pronounced him dead at the scene” from an apparent neck fracture, which matches up exactly with the video of his final moments. It’s obvious from the footage that he was unsteady on his feet. Police confirm “he had been drinking.”
De La Cruz reportedly lived in East Elmhurst. The community “is located in the northern section of Queens, a few miles away from the subway stop.”
It turns out that there is a reason why De La Cruz would rather try jumping the turnstile repeatedly until he broke his neck doing it. He was entrapped and his family might end up suing the city for enticing him into doing it. Liberals did away with prosecution for turnstile jumping way back when Cyrus Vance was District Attorney for Manhattan in 2017.
Since “turnstile jumping, or theft of services, is a class A misdemeanor and the most common charge in Manhattan’s criminal court, with nearly 10,000 arrests in 2016 alone, according to the district attorney’s office,” they decided to stop prosecuting it as a crime. “The prosecution of such low-level, non-violent offenses does not belong in a ‘reformed 21st Century justice system,’ Vance said in a statement.
