NY NY - Thomas Medlin, 15, Stony Brook, 9 Jan 2026

[investikater]

https://suffolkpd.org/Alerts/Press-Releases/ArtMID/10029/ArticleID/14352?/

View attachment 639496

Thomas Medlin, 15, of Saint James, left the Stony Brook School on Friday, January 9 at approximately 3:30 p.m. and ran to the Stony Brook Train station. He was last seen at Grand Central Station in Manhattan at approximately 5:30 p.m. the same day.

Is that a backpack in his right hand and a phone in his left hand? Where is the large object?

 

[CityKid]

It sounds like he might have taken the 6 to the F from GCT. LE originally stated they were following leads around Cherry and Rutgers Streets then Jay and Sands Streets.

I don't know if those were determined from sightings or mobile geolocation. Cherry & Rutgers coincides with the F train's path, so if it was mobile geolocation, he might have just been on the train at that point. If they have visuals, perhaps he got out at the E. Broadway stop only to find that it's quite difficult to get up to the bridge's pedestrian walkway from there.

York St. seems the likeliest exit point, which is right by the stairs to the bridge's walkway. It's about a 10-13 minute walk to the center of the bridge. If Thomas's last known location was on the bridge at 19:06, then it must have been a location fairly well along the bridge if the substantial splash was recorded four minutes later. Oh, Thomas. Society failed you.

IMO what seems to be a fairly sheltered suburban child could find that part of lower Manhattan hard to navigate in the dark, even navigating by phone. It seems quite possible that he was geolocated on the F and continued on the F to Brooklyn for York. Possibly the mother mentioning High Street (closer to the Brooklyn Bridge than the Manhattan) in Brooklyn was something she misheard. IMO Thomas had made a plan and misdirected friends with his "friend from Roblox" story. (Not that I would discount children being groomed by adults on Roblox; I just don't believe at this point that this is what happened here.)

 

[CityKid]

Thank you for letting me know about the fences. Someone had said it's a known place to go to jump, so I assumed otherwise. If people are getting past what's there, I wonder if something can be done about that. But good to know there's something.

If it turns out this boy still jumped -- where do they go from here to help prevent the next time?
It's so very sad.

RIP to my Google searches...
Tl; dr: the Manhattan Bridge is not a hugely problematic or popular attempt spot.
Anyone succeeding is IMO a tragedy, but determined people will find a way. The George Washington Bridge is the most-attempted bridge in NYC, and in the worst years in the mid 2010s, about 18 people a year succeeded. Since then, the Restoring the George project has been adding more barriers (higher fences plus netting) and the numbers have decreased. Bear in mind that it's the world's busiest vehicle bridge and the busiest stretch of road in the U.S., and about 300,000 vehicles pass over it every day, so progress is slow.
People have survived Manhattan Bridge jumps before. I can't find any current data on how many attempts have been made in recent years after all of the fencing and netting were added, but as a lifetime NYC resident, I can think of plenty of other places here people go to end their lives that are more "popular" than a bridge with pedestrian, bicycle and car lanes along with a heavy police foot patrol presence.

Restoring George Washington

Learn More About Restoring the George Washington Bridge project.

www.panynj.gov

Man Survives Suicide Jump Off Manhattan Bridge

A helicopter and police boat rushed to the East River near the

gothamist.com

 

[CityKid]

Why do people travel so far sometimes?

MOO It could be they want to spare loved ones the agony of finding them. Per this 2008 link below, "In a report published last fall called “Suicide Tourism in Manhattan, New York City, 1990–2004,” researchers at the New York Academy of Medicine and Weill Cornell Medical College found that of the 7,634 people who committed suicide in New York City between 1990 and 2004, 407 of them, or 5.3 percent, were nonresidents. More strikingly, nonresidents accounted for 274, or 10.8 percent, of the 2,272 suicides in Manhattan during that time."

https://nymag.com/news/features/46811/

 

[warp3dwing]

IMO what seems to be a fairly sheltered suburban child could find that part of lower Manhattan hard to navigate in the dark, even navigating by phone. It seems quite possible that he was geolocated on the F and continued on the F to Brooklyn for York. Possibly the mother mentioning High Street (closer to the Brooklyn Bridge than the Manhattan) in Brooklyn was something she misheard. IMO Thomas had made a plan and misdirected friends with his "friend from Roblox" story. (Not that I would discount children being groomed by adults on Roblox; I just don't believe at this point that this is what happened here.)

It is definitely hard to navigate that part of Manhattan. I’ve been in a similar situation down there where I had to take a very winding path of access streets to get to the bridge footpath. It wasn’t a pleasant walk. But I digress.

So, yeah, I’m thinking his phone just popped online as he passed through those F stations.

I wasn’t aware that the Roblox story came from Thomas himself and that he shared it with friends. That’s interesting. Why do that? Was he hoping to “disappear” rather than be caught committing suicide?