A 17-year-old boy died after falling from the top of a five-storey building in Sydney’s Surry Hills, Australia, in an incident that preliminary investigations have linked to a trend popular among young people and teenagers on social media platforms, involving entering abandoned or unusual buildings and filming adventures inside them.
Teenagers enter Hibernian House
According to the police’s preliminary investigation, CCTV footage showed that the teenager had entered Hibernian House secretly with two friends. The building is known for its graffiti-covered walls and has attracted interest from users who share videos of its corridors online. The boy was standing on a railing 30 metres above the ground and trying to keep his balance before falling into the street.
He died at the scene from his critical injuries, while his two friends received treatment there for severe psychological shock. Police said they were treating the incident as “a tragic accident resulting from a high-risk adventure”, while continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the boy and his friends’ entry into the building and the sequence of events before his fall.
Trespassing at the building continues after the incident
Days after the incident, a group of teenage girls were seen sneaking into the same building to take photographs after watching videos about it on TikTok. The girls said they had not known that the boy had died at the site days earlier. The TikTok videos circulating included footage of young people exploring the building’s corridors, with some users describing it as “a great location for photoshoots” and a place to relax.
This forms part of a social media trend known as “exploration”, in which young people enter abandoned, unusual or restricted buildings, film their experiences and post them on the platform. A person who has an office in the building said it was not unusual to see teenagers walking through its corridors, particularly during school holidays, despite restrictions on entry.
He added: “They find their way inside the building somehow,” explaining that people at the site ask young people to stay away from the roof and warn them that the location is unsafe. The incident comes after Australia became the first country in the world to ban social media use by people under the age of 16 on 10 December last year.
The United States has also recorded deaths linked to exploration adventures. In August, a 17-year-old boy died after falling while exploring a 45-storey abandoned skyscraper with friends in New Orleans.
Weeks later, a 15-year-old boy in Illinois died after falling 30 metres while exploring an abandoned tower. A 16-year-old girl was also killed at the beginning of the same month after falling from the roof of an abandoned residential complex in Florida while she was with friends.
