Young "Zoom" Actor Dies in Drunken Accident

According to the Associated Press, Jared Nathan, the 21-year-old actor who performed on the PBS children's show, Zoom, as a teenager, was killed in a car accident, Thursday.

Nathan, who attended the Julliard School in New York, was home in Nashua on Christmas vacation when the car he was in hit a tree. Police say the driver was Nathan's friend, Gabriel King, 19. Nathan was taken to a nearby hospital where he died and King was charged with drunk driving.

Nathan was 13 when he acted in the 1999 revival of Zoom, a television show originally shown in the 1970s. He stayed with the show for one season, but did not continue acting in it because executive producer Kate Taylor claimed he had reached adolescence.

Taylor said, "Jared was just a wonderful, wonderful kid. He was a quiet leader. He was also a really good team player."

Zoom, which ended in 2005,was produced by WGBH-TV in Boston and showed multi-racial children, ages 9 through 14, doing activities requested by viewers. These consisted of anything from science experiments to musical performances. In one funny skit, Taylor remembers Nathan trying to be a ventriloquist.