Number 8 Chris Ojeda
In June of 2018, New Jersey man Chris Ojeda invited friends and relatives to
his Somerset home for a triple celebration that included his birthday, Father’s Day and
a gender reveal for his unborn child. A stunt regarding the latter involved 34-year-old Ojeda
kicking a football filled with dye that was meant to reveal if he was going to have a boy
or a girl. The guests had gathered in the garden and began filming the stunt. With a beer in one
hand and sun glasses on his eyes, Ojeda kicked off his flip-flops and stepped up to the ball. He
struck it and a pink cloud of smoke filled the air as guests exclaimed “It’s a girl!” The celebratory
atmosphere lasted but a moment as, after kicking the ball, Ojeda slipped and fell backwards on his
foot, which bent at an awkward angle. He was left writhing in agony on the ground as his pregnant
wife and other guests rushed to his aid. Ojeda, who’d heard several crunching sounds as he landed
on his kicking foot, was helped to a chair and the pain he experienced reportedly got so intense
that his vision became blurry. His wife took him to the hospital where doctors would tell him that
he’d broken his ankle. Ojeda, who’d come up with the idea for the gender reveal, was forced to stay
off his injured leg for several weeks. Number 7 Texas Plane Crash
On September the 7th of 2019, a plane crashed in Turkey, Texas, while the pilot was carrying out
an elaborate stunt as part of a gender reveal for a friend. The identities of those involved
haven’t been disclosed but the aircraft was owned and operated by Horan Spraying Service,
a crop-dusting business based in Plainview. The one-seat plane was flying at a low altitude
and stalled following the release of about 350 gallons of pink water. It crashed into the ground,
sustained considerable damage and came to a stop inverted. Fortunately, the pilot and passenger
survived the crash with minor injuries. There were no prior mechanical faults with the plane
and a National Transportation Safety Board report concluded that the aircraft simply “got too slow”
and unbalanced following the water discharge. Number 6 Pamela Kreimeyer
56-year-old Pamela Kreimeyer died, in October of 2019, after being hit with shrapnel from an
explosion involving an improvised device meant to be used during a gender reveal. The party was
held at Kreimeyer’s residence, in Marion County, Iowa, for her son Brad and his girlfriend, Kirstie
Rankin. The family had placed colored powder along with gunpowder into a metal tube that was welded
to a metal base. A piece of wood separated the two powders and a hole had been drilled
into the side of the tube for a fuse. The family expected that their improvised stand would
function like a cannon with the gunpowder igniting and pushing the dye through the top of the tube,
which had been covered with tape. They’d hoped to post the reveal on social media for other
loved ones to see. The party took a tragic turn as the contraption ended up functioning like a pipe
bomb. The blast obliterated the tube and base sending metal fragments flying at great speed.
One of the shards struck Kreimeyer in the head even though she was 45 feet from the blast zone.
She died on the spot and the projectile that hit her flew for another 144 yards before landing in
a nearby field. Sheriff Jason Sandholdt expressed his condolences to the family but also offered the
incident as a reminder to members of the public of how dangerous homemade explosives can be.
Number 5 Autumn Garrett On July the 8th of 2017, a mass shooting
occurred at a house in Colerain, Ohio, during a gender reveal party held for 21-year-old Cheyanne
Willis. About a dozen guests had stayed into the night to watch a Spiderman movie. At around 11 pm,
two gunmen burst into the Capstan Drive home and opened fire on those inside. At least 14 bullets
flew through the living room before the attackers fled. Eight people and a dog were injured while
Willis’ cousin, 22-year-old Autumn Garrett, was shot dead. Willis was shot in the thigh and,
in the aftermath, reported that she’d suffered a miscarriage. The authorities would face difficulty
in piecing together the context and circumstances surrounding the shooting as many witnesses had
given them false leads. In fact, Willis would also reveal that, in spite of her initial statements,
she was never pregnant. It’s unclear why she’d lied and held what was essentially a fake gender
reveal party. Investigators connected a number of survivors to drug activity but fatal victim
Garrett, a young mother from Indiana, and her husband, who was among those injured,
didn’t have such affiliations and were only guests. Law enforcement eventually found that
Willis had been the target but concluded that the gunmen had opened fire with the intention of
killing everyone inside. Willis had become the focus of a murder-for-hire plot orchestrated
by Roshawn Bishop, aged 28, who was already in custody on drug trafficking charges at the time
of the shooting. He enlisted the help of a man named Vandell Slade who produced two shooters for
hire from Columbus. They were identified as James Echols and Michael Sanon, both in their early 20s,
and Slade had reportedly been the one to drive the shooters to the residence. All four men
were charged in the aftermath of the shooting with murder and attempted murder. Prior to the
attempt on her life, Willis had been the target of another violent attack. On Christmas Eve 2014, she
was assaulted by another woman in a parking lot and the attacker, who claimed Willis had stolen
her car, wrote an explicit confirmation of the beat down on her forehead in permanent marker. The
altercation was filmed and the clip went viral but the charges against the attacker were eventually
dropped after Willis failed to show up for court. Number 4 Incendiary Burnout
In 2019, law enforcement from Australia’s Queensland state released drone footage of
a vehicle that had erupted in flames as part of a warning against “burnouts”, an increasingly
popular trend among people looking to make an impression with their gender reveal parties. The
cars are rigged to emit clouds of either blue or pink smoke but the stunts can often end in
disaster, as demonstrated in the footage shared by the authorities. The incident had occurred on
April the 18th of 2018. At first, the reveal had gone as planned with guests celebrating as they
filmed the car driving down the road engulfed in blue smoke. Shortly after coming to a stop,
however, it caught fire forcing the driver and other guests to flee for their lives.
It kept burning in the middle of the road as thick smoke, which from blue had turned to black, rose
into the air. A spokesperson for the Queensland Police Service told the media that, as a result
of the incident, a 29-year-old man was convicted of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.
Number 3 Christopher Pekny
In February of 2021, expecting father Christopher Pekny, from New York, was killed in an explosion
by a contraption he’d been building for the gender reveal of his unborn child. 28-year-old Pekny had
been assembling the device, which reportedly contained a pipe, in his garage alongside his
brother, Michael. Both men were described by other family members as mechanically gifted.
The nature of the gender-reveal invention wasn’t specified by the authorities but
some have speculated that, in trying to build a device that would release smoke or fireworks,
Pekny had inadvertently created a pipe bomb. The police, responding to reports of an explosion,
arrived at the residence, in the Catskills town of Liberty. The blast had killed Pekny instantly and
injured Michael, who was rushed to the hospital and treated for severe injuries to his legs,
with medical staff essentially having to rebuild one of his knees.
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Number 2 Gender Reveal in Philadelphia In 2018, a video started circulating on
YouTube of a gender reveal party that went wrong in Philadelphia. The clip was even
featured on the New York Post’s channel but the identities of those involved weren’t made
public. An expecting couple lit the fuse on some firework tubes with the color of the pyrotechnics
expected to indicate the gender of their unborn child. Some commenters were quick to point out the
couple’s poor decision making as they’d chosen to set the fireworks off from a wobbly clothes rack.
Soon enough several were launched into the sky but the tremor from their ignition had caused
others to topple over from their unsteady support. Panicked screaming erupted as the
pyrotechnics started flying into the partygoers. The footage would show several of them,
including the camera handler, fleeing in an effort to escape the barrage of hot sparks. Fortunately,
none of the children in attendance were hurt and only a few adults suffered minor burns.
Number 1 Sawmill Fire In April of 2017 a wildfire burned through nearly
47,000 acres in the state of Arizona and its origin was traced to a gender reveal stunt.
While not the only massive blaze linked to such a party, the Sawmill Fire, as it came to be known,
is believed to have been the first. On April the 23rd, as part of the gender reveal celebrations,
off-duty US Border Patrol agent Dennis Dickey shot at a target packed with a highly explosive
substance called tannerite, in the Coronado State Forest. He missed the first few times
but hit it on the fourth shot, triggering blue smoke and a fireball. The surrounding grass was
instantly ignited and Dickey reportedly tried to put it out but couldn’t because of how rapidly
the blaze was spreading. He contacted the authorities and cooperated with them after
taking responsibility for the fire. Conditions of unusually low precipitation for the region
and winds of up to 40 mph contributed to its rapid expansion. The fire burned for 11 days and ravaged
terrain in spite of initial interventions from five air tankers and three helicopters carrying
water. Containing and extinguishing it took the combined efforts of over 800 personnel from local,
state and federal agencies. No one was hurt and no buildings were damaged but suppressing
the Sawmill Fire cost an estimated $8.2 million. Dickey pleaded guilty to the charge of starting a
fire without a permit. He was sentenced to five years’ probation and ordered to pay $200,000 in
restitution. In November of 2018, under the Freedom of Information Act, the Arizona Daily
Star obtained the initial video of Dickey shooting the explosive target. The footage circulated and
was mocked by online users, some of whom also ridiculed the concept of gender reveal parties.
Thanks for watching! As an expecting parent of sextuplets,
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