Number 8 Sam Ballard
In 2010, an Australian man developed a severe and debilitating illness after eating a live
slug on a dare. 19-year-old avid rugby player Sam Ballard was drinking with several of his friends,
at a home in Sydney, when they spotted the slug crawling on the patio. It was then that one of the
teens initiated the dare to ingest the mollusk, which Ballard accepted. In the days that followed,
he began complaining of intense pain in his legs, which was initially suspected as multiple
sclerosis, by which his father had also been afflicted. Shortly after Ballard had revealed that
he’d eaten the slug, doctors told his family that he developed a disease involving the parasitic
worm Angiostronjilus cantonensis, also known as the rat lungworm. It’s typically excreted by rats
and then consumed by other animals, infecting them as well. Ballard had inadvertently contracted the
infection but, unlike with rats, the parasite doesn’t complete its life cycle in humans. Its
larvae therefore don’t pass through the digestive tract and can end up in the brain, where they can
become lodged. Not long after he’d been diagnosed, Ballard slipped into a coma which lasted roughly
420 days. He came out of it a paraplegic and requiring 24 hour care but friends and family
reported that the infection hadn’t impaired his mental faculties. In November of 2018,
more than eight years since he’d been dared to eat the slug, Ballard succumbed to his illness
and passed away at Hornsby Hospital. Number 7 Jonathan Louis Burgos
On January the 10th of 2019, Las Vegas police responded to reports of a shooting
in the 200 block of West New York Avenue, where they subsequently found 36-year-old Jonathan Louis
Burgos. The man was in critical condition after being shot in the head. He was pronounced dead,
roughly 30 minutes later, and an investigation would trace the incident back to the theft of
his motorcycle. Burgos, whom his sister reported had a passion for tinkering with motorcycles,
had recently learned about his stolen vehicle’s whereabouts. The theft had allegedly been carried
out by 25-year-lold Kayla Biron, a woman with whom he’d frequently clashed in the past,
and her associates. Burgos and several companions, including his girlfriend, got in a pickup truck
and went to retrieve his stolen property. He was confronted by Biron upon his arrival
and an argument broke out between them. As Burgos was walking his motorcycle
towards the pickup truck, Biron allegedly kept a short-pump shotgun pointed at him.
Those at the scene would later recount that the man, who in the past had taken part
in amateur mixed martial arts bouts, looked frightened. As he got near the truck, Burgos
then reportedly turned around and dared Biron to fire. According to a subsequent arrest warrant,
his words to her had been along the lines of “if she was going to shoot him to do it already”.
Biron then pulled the trigger and pumped a round into his head. She fled the scene
and spent two weeks on the run before she was arrested on murder charges, without incident,
at a home in the southeast valley. Number 6 Anurag Chandra
A dare involving a doorbell ditch prank led to the death of three teenagers in Southern California,
on January the 19th of 2020. The victims had been part of a group of six teens who’d been having a
sleepover at a residence in Corona, Riverside County, when the dare originated. Shortly after
10 pm, the oldest of the boys, 18-year-old Sergio Campusano, drove the others to the nearby home of
Anurag Chandra, aged 42. One of them then went to the front door and rang the doorbell
several times before running back to the idling Toyota Prius, in which Campusano and the others
were waiting. The latter then sped off but Chandra, enraged by the prank, chased after them
in his 2019 Infinity Q50. Looking back on the incident Campusano remembered that he and his
friends were terrified as Chandra barreled towards them at high speed and then started
nudging their car with his Q50. Chandra ultimately rammed into them, causing the Prius to spin out of
control and slam into a tree on the side of the road. Three of the teens, including Campusano,
survived with moderate to major injuries from which they recovered to varying degrees in the
aftermath. The other three, identified as Daniel Hawkins, Jacob Ivascu and Drake Ruiz, were killed
in the crash. Chandra was arrested a few hours after the accident and subsequently charged with
three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder. As indicated by updates on the
matter, his trial date was set for April of 2022. Number 5 Death of Kevin Bennett
In the early hours of August the 17th of 2012, three teenage boys were involved
in the fatal beating of a homeless man, in Liverpool, England. 17-year-old Connor Doran,
his younger brother, Brandon, and their friend Simon Evans found Kevin Bennett sleeping rough
outside a supermarket. The older of the Doran brothers reportedly dared Evans to attack him by
allegedly saying "I bet you haven't got it in you to do him in." While Brandon acted as a lookout,
Evans started kicking the defenseless man repeatedly, inflicting critical injuries. It’s
unclear if Connor joined him in the attack but he would later be identified as the “leader of the
pack”. Six days after the senseless beating, which was captured by surveillance cameras,
Bennett died in a local hospital. Connor, Brandon and Evans were arrested and ultimately sentenced
to minimum terms of 12, 6 and 8 years in prison. Also convicted was Connor and Brandon’s mother,
42-year-old Linda. She was jailed for 30 months after being found guilty of perverting the course
of public justice by trying to fabricate alibis for her sons. The prosecution would argue that
a portion of the responsibility for the killing had rested on Linda for what was described as a
total lack of parental guidance, support and upbringing. In October, another son of hers,
23-year-old Ryan, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder after attacking a
stranger with a bottle in a takeaway shop. Number 4 David Dowell
Roughly ten days after he was dared to eat a gecko at a Christmas party, in early December of 2018,
an Australian man succumbed to a devastating salmonella infection at Brisbane’s Mater Hospital.
Father-of-three David Dowell was described by his friends as a man who would never back down
from a challenge. Partygoers would later report seeing him eat the lizard on December the 1st.
Within a few days he became extremely sick, with symptoms that included him being severely bloated
and unable to hold down any food. Paramedics were called to his home and initially believed
that 34-year-old Dowell had an upset stomach or that his symptoms were the effects of excessive
alcohol consumption during the party. Allira, Dowell’s partner of 15 years, pleaded with them
to take him to the hospital. It was there that doctors diagnosed him with salmonella,
which they initially believed he’d contracted from uncooked chicken, prior to learning about the
gecko ingestion. Salmonella, a foodborne bacteria type, usually results in patients going through
days of diarrhea, stomach cramps and fever. In Dowell’s case, however, the infection was much
more aggressive. His body became swollen with fluid, particularly in the lungs, stomach and
testicles, which had reportedly grown to the size of grapefruits, as he’d begun to “rot from
the inside out”. He passed away while in surgery on December the 11th. In the wake of his death,
Dowell’s family criticized the hospital for what they believed had been a lackadaisical approach to
the severity of the man’s condition but a coroner determined he’d been provided adequate care.
Number 3 Tiernan Darnton In the early hours of May the 28th of 2018,
an elderly British woman was found trapped and unresponsive at her home in Heysham,
Lancashire, which had caught fire. 94-year-old Mary Gregory’s screams had alerted her neighbors.
First responders extracted her from under a table, inside the smoke-filled bungalow, and
rushed her to the hospital. She died a few days later, on June the 1st, from what was determined
to have been smoke inhalation and pneumonia. An investigation by the county’s fire and rescue
services established that the most probable cause for the blaze had been a dropped cigarette and a
verdict of accidental death was recorded. Within weeks of Gregory’s death, her step-grandson,
Tiernan Darnton, revealed what he referred to as his “darkest secret” during a game of truth
or dare. He told two friends that he’d used a lighter to ignite Gregory’s curtains, thereby
triggering the fire that ultimately ended her life. He tried to justify the killing as an act of
mercy, claiming that he didn’t want her to suffer from dementia anymore. His friends, however,
believed the story to be a fabrication and didn’t report it. Police reopened the investigation in
2019, after Darnton again confessed to killing his step-grandmother during a counseling session. He
reportedly admitted to having started the fire and told the counselor that others knew about
it and could incriminate him. Further evidence connected him to the killing,
including drawings of the bungalow’s floor plan as well as Internet searches made after the fire.
They included "I'm a murderer", "I'm a monster and I'm going to hell", and "urge to kill again".
21-year-old Darnton was eventually sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 15 years served.
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Number 2 Philip Evans
In March of 2016, an English man was given a sentence of 3 years in prison after he’d pleaded
guilty to manslaughter, following an incident in which he’d killed his friend with a single punch.
25-year-old Patrick Ryan and Philip Evans, aged 42, were drinking at a property in Wednesfield,
West Midlands, in October of the previous year. Evans, who was known to become more boisterous
when inebriated, dared Ryan to punch him. The former boasted that he’d never been knocked
out before and presented his chin. Ryan was reluctant to hit the father-of-one, at first,
but Evans continued provoking him. He eventually delivered a swinging punch that landed on the
left upper-side of the other man’s neck. Evans reportedly complimented the strike and the pair
continued drinking until he collapsed on the floor of his living room. Ryan believed that he’d passed
out because of the alcohol and didn’t call for an ambulance. He alerted one of Evans’ neighbors
before heading to his residence, which was a few doors down on the same street. It was there that
he was subsequently arrested. A neighbor found Evans but was unable to revive him and called
for an ambulance. Unfortunately, there was nothing that paramedics could for the man as Ryan’s punch
had caused fatal internal hemorrhage. Number 1 Playground Accident in Bavaria
In 2012, a man suffered a fatal accident at a playground in Bavaria, Germany,
after daring his friends to use an automobile and spin him on a roundabout. According to police in
the Niederviehbach area, the unnamed 20-year-old had asked three friends to strap him into the
carousel with duct tape. They then connected it to a BMW and drove off as quickly as they could,
causing the merry-go-round to spin at a dangerous speed. The tape came undone in the process and the
man was forcefully flung from the ride. He suffered devastating head injuries and was
pronounced dead at the scene. His friends had to be treated for shock in the aftermath while
local authorities launched an investigation into the incident, which the state prosecutor viewed
as a case of involuntary manslaughter. Thanks for watching! Would you dive from
a 10-foot-tall platform into a pool filled to the brim with gold coins if you could keep as many of
them as you could carry in the aftermath? Let us know in the comments section below!