9.
KAYLA BIRON
2019 got off to a pretty rough start for a 25-year-old Las Vegas woman named Kayla Biron.
Just 10 days into the new year, she reportedly argued with 36-year-old Jonathon Louis Burgos
in an alleyway regarding an ongoing dispute related to a motorcycle.
Biron allegedly held a pump-action shotgun in the man’s face, to which he said that
if she was going to shoot him, that she should just go ahead and do it already.
He probably wishes he never said that though.
Kayla took Burgos’ advice seriously and pulled the trigger.
Police found the gravely wounded victim a short while later and rushed him to the hospital,
where sadly, he died from his injuries.
In the meantime, the shooter fled on foot.
But she couldn’t run forever.
Detectives already had Biron pinpointed as a suspect, and they issued a warrant for her
arrest the following day.
A fugitive task force located the woman and arrested her two weeks after the deadly shooting.
She was charged with murder.
It’s been three years, but it’s unclear where the case currently stands.
8.
MILK CRATE CHALLENGE
You may have already heard of the Milk Crate Challenge, which involves traversing over
a pyramid of stacked milk crates – a task that apparently isn’t very easy, judging
by the many videos of participants falling that appeared on social media.
While many people found it funny to watch the viral wipe-outs, the dare was anything
but amusing to emergency room staff members who were tasked with treating needlessly injured
patients.
Speaking with the “Today” show, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Shawn Anthony warned that the
Milk Crate Challenge is dangerous and that a lot of patients are showing up at hospitals
with serious injuries, including broken wrists, dislocated shoulders, ACL and meniscus tears,
and even spinal cord injuries, which can be fatal.
He also pointed out that these totally avoidable emergencies were putting unnecessary strain
on already overburdened healthcare systems that are struggling to deal with the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic.
The problem became serious enough for TikTok to ban its users from posting videos of the
challenge.
7.
SAM BALLARD
Teenage rugby player Sam Ballard was having a so-called “red wine appreciation night”
with his friends in Sydney back in 2010 when a slug crawled into view.
As soon as he saw the slimy creature, he asked his friends if they dared him to eat it.
Before they could respond, the young man tossed the slug into his mouth and swallowed it.
Sam became extremely sick.
He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors discovered that he was infected with rat lungworm.
Snails and slugs can acquire the parasite by eating the infected feces of rodents.
And while people rarely experience symptoms from rat lungworm, it can occasionally cause
a rare but serious brain infection known as eosinophilic meningo-encephalitis, which is
what happened in Sam’s case.
He lapsed into a coma for 420 days and was left paralyzed from the neck down.
Sam’s friend, Michael Sheasby, told the local press that the sight of his quadriplegic
friend was shocking.
He described Sam as “very very gaunt” and said “there were cables everywhere.”
The ailing young man’s mother, Katie, said she doesn’t blame her son’s buddies for
the dare that forever changed Sam’s life.
In a true display of friendship, the group rallied around Sam when he was finally released
from the hospital after three grueling years.
He suffered from seizures, couldn’t control his body temperature, and required expensive
24/7 care that his family struggled to afford.
And while the rugby team helped raise money to pay for the care, the cost was still burdensome.
Sadly, Sam passed away in late 2018, eight years after the fateful dare.
His final words to his mother were “I love you.”
6.
SKULLBREAKER CHALLENGE
As we’re sure you remember, people struggled to find ways to fill their newfound free time
at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And while many used the opportunity to catch up on much-needed family time or home repairs,
pursue a passion, or otherwise put the time to good use, some people’s boredom became
outright destructive.
The skull-breaker challenge, which went viral around that time, is a good example of the
latter.
It involved two people targeting someone who was walking in-between them and swiftly kicking
the victim’s legs out from underneath them, causing them to fall.
The challenge was named after the victims’ tendency to fall backwards and hit their head
on the ground.
And while it doesn’t take a genius to understand how dangerous the dare is, young people don’t
always think things through, and they tend to latch onto trends without considering the
risks.
So it’s no surprise that kids across the U.S. began showing up at hospitals with serious
injuries from the challenge, leaving parents, teachers, and school administrators horrified.
Prosecutors from the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey decided to take a no-nonsense
approach to combating the problem by charging two minors with third-degree aggravated assault
and third-degree endangering an injured victim.
Their victim, a 13-year-old boy, suffered from a seizure, a head injury, and a concussion.
He was reportedly unresponsive when EMT’s arrived at the school, where the accused pair
had carried out the challenge.
The boy’s mother told the Washington Post that the long-term effects of his injuries
were not yet known as he endured his lengthy road to recovery.
She said that her son felt punished because he couldn’t do the things he enjoys doing.
One mother from Alabama posted on social media that her son broke two wrist bones and needed
surgery after falling victim to the disturbing dare.
Other teens reported “feeling numb” and momentarily blacking out.
A TikTok spokesperson cautioned users to behave safely “whether online or off” and warned
that posting videos of the prank would not make someone “TikTok famous.”
What internet trends did you try during the lockdown?
Let us know in the comments below and if you’re liking this video, be sure to hit the thumbs
up and subscribe buttons if you haven’t yet!
:)
5.
WHOOSH BOTTLE EXPERIMENT
Parents are increasingly pointing the finger at social media when their kids are injured
or killed in the process of performing a dare.
And their allegations are not necessarily without merit.
These deadly dares caught the attention of Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal more
than once, prompting him to publicly criticize TikTok for what he felt was a lack of oversight
of its users’ content.
His concerns were most recently sparked by what’s known as the “whoosh bottle experiment.”
It involves lighting alcohol on fire inside of a plastic bottle to create a “whoosh”
sound, according to a press release that Blumenthal wrote calling on TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew,
to take action against dangerous user content.
The senator’s latest campaign against the social media platform came after a 12-year-old
from East Haven ended up in the hospital with severe burns.
Local fire officials used the incident as an opportunity to remind the public that “fire
is not a toy.”
The Connecticut Burn Center’s medical director, Dr. Alisa Savetamal, expressed similar sentiments
in an interview with news station WTNH, stating that the challenge can cause permanent scarring,
as well as injuries from inhaling the hot gas that’s produced when the alcohol ignites.
TikTok has updated its search settings to warn anyone who searches for the “whoosh
bottle experiment” about recognizing “harmful challenges and hoaxes.”
But it shouldn’t come down to a child being seriously injured in order for the company
to do something about this type of content, according to Blumenthal, who pointed out that
this is exactly what happened with the “whoosh bottle experiment.”
He asked the CEO to publicly meet with him, state school officials, and concerned parents
and to explain why such “dangerous, destructive content” remains on the platform and what
steps TikTok is taking to eliminate it.
A company spokesperson said that the “whoosh bottle experiment” originated as a school
science experiment and can be done safely when proper precautions are taken.
4.
DAVID DOWELL
Thirty-four-year-old David Dowell was in “absolute agony” when he was rushed to a hospital
in Brisbane, Australia in 2018.
His stomach became severely bloated, his urine was black, his lungs filled with fluid, and
he vomited green liquid.
Two days earlier, David had attended a party, where his friends allegedly dared him to eat
a gecko.
A witness told the man’s partner, Allira, that they watched as he took them up on the
challenge.
Doctors had diagnosed the ailing man with salmonella poisoning, but his suffering went
beyond the normal symptoms.
The doctor reportedly said that if David had eaten a gecko, it could be what caused his
illness.
But there wasn’t enough evidence of it happening for the doctor to know for sure, especially
since David hadn’t mentioned that he ate a lizard.
He died during surgery 10 days after the party.
David’s family, who claim that they urged doctors to do more to try helping him, told
the press that he “basically rotted from the inside out.”
His grieving girlfriend said that she had begged paramedics to take him to the hospital
after they tried writing off his symptoms as a bad hangover or an upset stomach.
A coroner determined that the father of three had received adequate care, but his loved
ones remain convinced that the doctors at the hospital truly didn’t care about him.
3.
THE BENADRYL CHALLENGE
As schoolchildren, we’re taught that experimenting with drugs is a bad thing.
But the message doesn’t always reach people clearly enough to stop them from doing it,
and some have even found ways to turn their curiosity into a game.
Take, for example, the “Benadryl Challenge,” which began trending on TikTok in 2020.
The challenge encourages people to ingest excessive amounts of the allergy medication
in order to experience the hallucinatory effects that it’s known to cause when someone takes
too much of it.
If that sounds like a terrible idea, that’s because it is.
A 14-year-old girl is one of several teens from the Fort Worth, Texas area who landed
in the emergency room after taking up on the dare.
Her mother reportedly told the doctors who treated her that the girl had a resting heart
rate of 199 beats per minute, and that she was hallucinating and speaking in fractured
sentences.
At the time, there were two other kids being treated at the same hospital for Benadryl
overdoses.
Nearly two years later, medication overdoses in the area appear to be on the rise again,
and local officials are concerned that the dangerous dare may have resurfaced.
Over a two-day span in late January, nine kids from two different local high schools
overdosed, and six of them were hospitalized.
Their schools declined to comment on what medications the teens took, but the overdoses
raised suspicions that the Benadryl Challenge may be at fault.
Adults are also worried about a trending video that shows a TikTok user frying a chicken
in cough syrup.
Although the so-called “sleepy chicken” recipe appears to be satire, it’s fair to
worry that some people might turn it into the next viral challenge.
2.
THE TRIPLE TRAGEDY
As you may have noticed, a lot of tragedies result from viral social media challenges.
But dangerous dares were popular among young people even before the rise of social media.
Back in 1993, the New York Times reported that two teenage boys were hit by a pick-up
truck in the middle of the night while laying in a road in western Pennsylvania to prove
that they had “nerves of steel.”
Eighteen-year-old Michael A. Shingledecker Jr died almost instantly, and 17-year-old
Dean Bartlett was critically injured.
The following night, another teenager named Michael Macias was hit by a car in the Bayville
neighborhood of Long Island while performing the same dare.
He was critically injured.
These are just a few examples of the disturbing trend, which was inspired by the movie “The
Program.”
A scene in the film shows a college football hero laying in the middle of a busy highway.
Around the time the movie came out, young men throughout the U.S. began dying and suffering
from injuries after being struck by vehicles while laying in the road.
And while authorities couldn’t always prove that they were copying the stunt in the film,
the timing of these incidents made it seem likely.
Touchstone Pictures defended the R-rated movie in a statement, saying that it does not condone
or encourage dangerous behavior and that the character was clearly depicted as a troubled
and heavily intoxicated individual who was acting irresponsibly.
1.
NYLA ANDERSON
Most people are familiar with some version of what’s known these days as the “Blackout
Challenge.”
It seems to be passed from one generation to the next as a mainstay among reckless adolescent
dares.
The game involves a person restricting their own breathing to the point where they faint,
and for some reason, there’s a perpetual myth that it’s harmless when it’s anything
but.
Tawainna Anderson learned just how devastating the Blackout Challenge can be when she found
her 10-year-old daughter Nyla unresponsive in her bedroom last year.
The little girl was rushed to the hospital, where she spent several days in the intensive
care unit before passing away from her injuries.
Speaking with TODAY parents, licensed social worker Elizabeth Wood said that Nyla had a
history of watching videos related to the Blackout Challenge.
Her family was convinced that her death was the accidental result of her participation
in the game.
Tawainna courageously went public with the story of Nyla’s tragic death, which she
hopes serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of the Blackout Challenge.
She said that she wants no other parents to go through the emotional pain that she has
from losing her daughter.
But she’s not the only parent who’s had to cope with the loss of her child due to
the game.
Just months before Nyla passed away, 9-year-old LaTerius Smith Jr. of Tennessee and a 12-year-old
child from Oklahoma died from sierious causes that their families believe are related to
the Blackout Challenge.
As Tawainna pointed out, kids aren’t mentally equipped to always understand the gravity
of the risks they’re taking, and they don’t understand right from wrong the way an adult
mind does.
So it’s important for parents to pay attention to what their children are doing online, because
doing so could prevent a tragedy.
Thanks for watching!
If you’d like to learn about more dares gone wrong, let us know in the comments below
and be sure to subscribe.
See you next time, bye! :)