YouTube shooting stunt kills Minnesota man
Man convinced his girlfriend to shoot him while he held an encyclopedia to his chest
Before Monday, before the 911 call and police investigation, Pedro Ruiz III, an aspiring YouTube star in rural Minnesota, spent considerable time convincing his girlfriend to shoot a gun at his chest.
There would be a thick encyclopedia book between the barrel and his body, authorities say he told 19-yearold Monalisa Perez. The pages, he reasoned, would stop the bullet.
He even had evidence that it had worked before — a different book with an entrance hole but no exit.
So on Monday evening, the young couple positioned cameras outside their home. They wanted fame, family said, and danger often brings it.
“Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever,” Perez teased in a tweet at 5 p.m. “HIS idea not MINE.”
It had been three months since the young couple added their vlog, La MonaLisa, to YouTube, where they posted clips of their daily lives and their 3-year-old daughter. They live in Halstad, Minn., a tiny town on the North Dakota border between Grand Forks and Fargo. Episodes featured scenes from their home, the car or at the doctor’s office, which is where Perez revealed in May that she was pregnant with a boy.
Their shtick, though, was pulling minor pranks: doughnuts with baby powder instead of powdered sugar, feigning paralysis from a grocery store wheelchair, hiding hot peppers on an egg salad sandwich. Just this week, Perez posted a video of Ruiz doing a handstand inside a rotating fun house tunnel at the county fair.
But the bullet and book stunt was supposed to be their breakthrough.
With one camera attached to a ladder and the other propped on the back of a car, the couple staged their stunt, according to authorities. Ruiz held the book to his chest and Perez held the gun, a gold Desert Eagle .50 calibre pistol considered “one of the most powerful semi-automatic handguns in the world.”
From a foot away, court documents say, Perez fired.
The bullet didn’t stop in the book but pierced Ruiz. He was declared dead at the house. When Perez called 911 at 6:30 p.m., she told dispatchers the shooting was accidental and explained the YouTube plan.
Perez was arrested Monday for the reckless discharge of a gun. That charge was later upgraded to second degree manslaughter. She was released on $7,000 bail after her initial court appearance and ordered to wear a GPS monitor and stay away from firearms, KVRR TV reported. She faces up to 10 years behind bars.