The family of 13-year-old Jade Smith says their daughter’s death was not just a private tragedy but the end point of a system that pulled her away and never really brought her back. They argue that when she jumped from a New York City bridge, she did so after being taken from the people who knew her best and placed in the care of agencies that failed to keep her safe. Now, their grief is turning into a legal and moral fight over what the city owes its most vulnerable kids.
Jade’s relatives describe a girl who was deeply troubled but still very much theirs, a child they insist could have been helped instead of shuffled through a bureaucracy. In their telling, she died after being “taken from them,” and they want the city to answer for every decision that led her to the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge.
The final jump and a family’s breaking point
Jade Smith was just 13 years old when she climbed onto the Brooklyn Bridge and jumped into the East River in New York City, a moment that first responders treated as a desperate search for her body. According to a lawsuit now in federal court, she died after that jump in January 2023, a death that her relatives say was the foreseeable result of years of missteps by New York City’s child-welfare system. The complaint describes a delusional, mentally ill teenager who needed intensive care but instead cycled through placements and crises until she ended her life on one of the city’s most iconic structures.
Her family’s lawsuit says the city had already “ripped” the 13-year-old NYC girl from her home, labeling her too unstable to stay with the people who raised her, then failed to monitor her as she repeatedly fled from city care. By the time she reached the Brooklyn Bridge, the family argues, Jade had been left to navigate delusions and suicidal thoughts with little consistent oversight. They say that is why they talk about her as having been taken from them twice, first on paper and then in the most permanent way possible.
“Taken from them”: inside the family’s case against ACS
The lawsuit centers on the role of the Administration for Children’s Services, or ACS, which the family says failed Jade at nearly every turn. According to court filings, New York City is now facing a detailed reckoning over how ACS handled a child everyone agrees was in serious psychiatric distress. The complaint describes how the agency removed Jade from her family, placed her in foster and residential settings, and then allegedly did not track her closely even as she ran away and voiced suicidal thoughts…