A budding young YouTuber ended up losing his after a stunt went horribly wrong.
In 2017, 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz tasked his girlfriend Monalisa Perez with helping him shoot what she labelled as 'one of the most dangerous videos ever' in the hope of going viral on YouTube.
Despite it being extremely dangerous, the pair still went ahead with the questionable stunt.
Perez, who was thought to 19 at the time, had been dating Ruiz for five years. They shared a young daughter, and Perez was carrying their second at the time tragedy struck.
For the stunt, Ruiz asked his girlfriend to shoot him with a powerful 50-calbre Desert Eagle handgun from close range while he stood behind a book.
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Speaking to the camera he said: "I'm going to stand behind it [the book] and Monalisa is going to shoot it.
He then named his role models, Nitro Circus and Jackass, before adding that his 'purpose is to be crazier than them'.
Going on to note how risky the stunt was, Ruiz continued: "I may fail but if I fail, I want to die trying. We're all going to die anyways, it's just a matter of how and when."
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Ruiz had experimented ahead of filming the stunt and under the impression that the book would be thick enough to stop the bullet from hitting him.
But sadly, this wasn't the case and the young father ended up injured by the bullet.
Perez called 911 after it all went wrong, but Ruiz was pronounced dead at the scene.
Reports said that their young daughter, who was three at the time, had witnessed the harrowing ordeal.
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In 2018, Perez went on to be jailed for six months after pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter.
The mom was also banned for life from owning firearms and ordered that she could make no financial gain from the case, The Guardian reported.
Speaking in the years that followed Ruiz's death, Perez said she felt suicidal.
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"I was that 19-year-old girl who wanted to kill myself for almost a year-and-a-half because I thought I had no purpose after what happened," she told InForum.
Meanwhile, Ruiz's aunt said that the stunt 'shouldn't have happened at all'.
"I wish they wouldn’t have done it. I wish he would’ve just done another prank," said Claudia Ruiz.
"They were in love. It was just a prank gone wrong. It shouldn’t have happened like this. It shouldn’t have happened at all."
Topics: YouTube, Social Media, Viral
Niamh Shackleton