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.
Her mother, Terri Nimmo, has become the public face of that anger, saying ACS caused the family to lose their home, their jobs, and ultimately their daughter. In her account, the agency’s involvement did not stabilize Jade, it destabilized everything around her, leaving relatives cut off from decisions about her treatment and powerless to intervene when she spiraled. Nimmo’s claim that ACS cost them “their daughter” is now at the heart of the suit that accuses the agency of negligence and indifference.
Alleged failures, official defenses, and what happens next
According to the lawsuit, Jade’s death did not come out of nowhere. The filings say that, in the months before she jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge, she had been in and out of placements, had run away multiple times, and had shown clear signs of being a danger to herself. The family argues that ACS and related providers knew she was delusional and suicidal yet still allowed her to slip through the cracks of city care. In their telling, the system’s job was to wrap around a 13-year-old in crisis, not simply document her breakdowns.
Officials have pushed back, pointing to the complexity of cases like Jade’s and insisting that ACS works to keep children safe. A spokesperson has said there will be a full review of what happened, even as the city prepares to defend itself in court against the detailed suit. For Jade’s family, though, the legal arguments are almost secondary to the basic fact that a child who should have been watched constantly was able to reach a bridge, climb a railing, and disappear into the East River.
Her story has now become a shorthand for the stakes of child-welfare decisions in NYC. Advocates point to Jade Smith’s jump from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River in New York City as a brutal reminder that paperwork and protocols mean very little if a teenager in crisis can still walk alone to a landmark and end her life. The family’s lawsuit, backed by reporting that describes how the city “ripped” a delusional 13-year-old NYC girl from her family, has turned one girl’s suicide into a broader test of how far the Administration for Children’s Services must go to keep kids like Jade alive.
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