Children Are Too Young to Die

The film graphically calls attention to the brutal dangers of playing on top of elevators in public housing high-rise 30-story buildings in New York City. The slang is called 'elevator surfing', 'elevator action' or 'elevator chicken' and it is a deadly game in which groups of children ride up and down the elevator shafts on top of a moving elevator car and jump from one moving car to the top of another. At times, a child waits in the pit of the elevator shaft. When a car pauses on the lowest floor, he grabs the electrical cable and rides upward. 'Children Are Too Young To Die' begins with a bloody reenactment of an elevator accident in which a 10-year-old boy gets his arm cut off by the counterweight in an elevator shaft. The story unfolds and reveals real issues and deaths resulting from such dangerous activities.