When Pranks Turn Deadly: Swatting, Stunts, and Tragedies
When Pranks Go Too Far
We've all seen pranks online—some funny, some cringeworthy, some downright dangerous. But what happens when a prank crosses the line from harmless joke to deadly tragedy?
In this Thursday episode, we're exploring multiple shocking incidents where pranks, online feuds, and marketing stunts spiraled out of control and ended in death.
These are stories that remind us: not every joke is funny, and not every stunt is worth the risk.
The Wichita Swatting Tragedy
On December 28, 2017, Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old father of two, was at home in Wichita, Kansas, when he heard sirens outside. He stepped onto his porch—and was shot by police.
Andrew wasn't a criminal. He wasn't involved in any crime. He was the victim of "swatting"—a prank where someone makes a false emergency call to send SWAT teams to an innocent person's home.
It all started with a $1.50 bet on Call of Duty. Two gamers, Casey Weiner and Shane Gaskill, got into an argument. Shane gave Casey a fake address. Casey asked Tyler Barriss—a known "swatter"—to make the call.
Barriss called 911 and claimed there was a hostage situation at that address. Police surrounded the home. When Andrew Finch stepped outside, confused, an officer shot him.
Andrew died. Tyler Barriss was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. The gamers involved also faced charges.
The Sandbag Overpass Tragedy
In December 2017, Marquis Byrd, 22, was riding as a passenger in a car on Interstate 75 in Toledo, Ohio, when a sandbag was thrown from an overpass by four teenagers.
The sandbag crashed through the windshield, striking Marquis in the head and neck. He died from blunt-force trauma.
The teens—ages 13 to 14—were charged. One was charged with murder for throwing the sandbag. The others were charged with involuntary manslaughter.
In a controversial decision, the judge sentenced the teens to juvenile detention until age 21, rather than adult prison. The case sparked outrage and debate about accountability for young offenders.
The YouTube Book Stunt
In June 2017, Pedro Ruiz III, 22, convinced his girlfriend Monalisa Perez, 19, to shoot him with a .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun—while he held a thick encyclopedia in front of his chest.
Pedro believed the book would stop the bullet. He wanted to film it for YouTube.
Monalisa hesitated, but Pedro insisted. She fired. The bullet went straight through the book and killed Pedro.
Monalisa was charged with second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 180 days in jail. She was pregnant with their second child at the time.
The video was never posted, but the tragedy became a permanent reminder of the dangers of chasing viral fame.
The Aqua Teen Hunger Force Bomb Scare
In 2007, a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force went horribly wrong.
LED light boards depicting cartoon characters were placed around Boston as part of a promotional stunt. But residents mistook them for bombs.
The city went into full panic mode. Bomb squads were deployed. Transportation was shut down. The "Boston bomb scare" made national headlines.
No one was hurt, but the incident cost the city over $2 million and resulted in legal consequences for those involved.
The Lesson
These stories are tragic reminders that pranks, stunts, and online feuds can have real-world, deadly consequences.
Whether it's swatting, dangerous YouTube challenges, or reckless behavior—the cost of a prank can be someone's life.
TRANSCRIPT:
Pranks Gone Wrong MELISSA
Mandy: [00:00:00] Imagine you're winding down after work, just getting settled in when suddenly you hear sirens outside, not just one, but dozens, hundreds of police are gathering outside your home in full combat gear. You step out onto your porch because you hear a loud bang. And before you can even process what's happening, a bullet rips into you.
This isn't a war zone, it's your home. It. And this is exactly what happened to Andrew Finch in Wichita, Kansas. Today we're diving into six shocking incidents just like this one where pranks, online beefs, and marketing stunts spiraled into tragedies.
Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa.
Melissa: Hi Mandy. How are you?
Mandy: I am doing well. I'm doing well. I thought I had more to say, but we just recorded a bonus chat episode. We have been recording, [00:01:00] I feel like, so many times per week for the last couple of weeks.
As much as I love you, I have nothing left to say to you.
Melissa: That is maybe the most hurtful thing I've ever heard. But also
you too.
Mandy: Yeah, same. It's, it's
Melissa: don't either. Um,
Mandy: at this point.
Melissa: yeah, no, totally fine. Not offended at all, but I will be thinking about this when I go to sleep tonight, so.
Mandy: Please don't. Please don't. Okay. So today we are bringing to you another just. Fun mystery Thursday or Thursday episode. It's a Thursday episode.
Um, I hope that you guys are enjoying the Thursday episodes. I know we got one review that suggested that this person did not enjoy the Thursday episodes. I'm pretty sure it said these new episodes are not it.
Uh, so anyway, if you don't like the Thursday episodes, you're probably not gonna like this one because it is another collection of interesting stories, which I love [00:02:00] doing. I love
doing these ones. Yeah, me too. Um, and because I feel like there are like interesting stories like that are in the crime world, but like, maybe there's not like a ton of information to make a full length podcast out of, but it's still one
that I wanna talk about and share.
So
we have several of them today, and I love this topic. I love the idea. Well, I love the con Well, I can't say I love you. Can't say You love because
they're.
Right. People were hurt in these stories, so I can't say that I love them, but this topic of, or the idea really of accidental murder or accidental death due to like people just not being very, um,
I don't know. They
weren't really thi Yeah, they didn't think through kind of like the action, you know, the results that could come from their actions. So those kind of stories are kind of fascinating because mostly I like to see what the outcome ends up being as far as like how they get charged and things like
Melissa: Totally. 'cause it's vastly different in this
Mandy: For sure. Yeah, definitely. [00:03:00] So we'll get right into our first little story. It was December 28th, 2017, and it's just another winter evening for the Finch family at 10 33 West McCormick Street in Wichita, Kansas. But at about 6:10 PM chaos was already brewing a thousand miles away. It began as a gamer feud.
A dollar 50 wager on Call of Duty, world War ii, and it ended with a prank call that would stun an entire city. So you see two players, Casey Weiner of Ohio and Shane Gaskill of Kansas, had argued after Casey's video game character was friendly, fired, and Casey then threatened retaliation in the form of real life harm.
And so Shane Gaskell, who was kind of grasping at vengeance himself, you know they're in this feud, gives Casey Weiner a wrong address. At this point, Casey then reaches out to his longtime friend [00:04:00] and this person who's a swatter, no, maybe they're not longtime friends, edit at this point. Casey Weiner then reached out to a longtime swatter that he knows named Tyler Baris.
This guy was a serial swatter who had a criminal history, including making false bomb threats in multiple states. So if you're wondering what a swatter is, maybe you've never heard that term. This is a person who makes malicious prank calls to emergency services like 9 1 1, or even a SWAT team in a local area.
And
Melissa: Question growing up, didn't you always think like, you will go to jail,
you will be in so much trouble? I was
terrified of anything. I was terrified if I actually needed to call somebody because I'd think, what if, what
if this isn't serious
enough? So it's wild to me that some
people swa, uh, like these swatters will actually do this on
Mandy: Yeah, so actually the only, and maybe you never did when you were a kid, I never personally dialed 9 1 1 as a kid, like, just to see what happened. [00:05:00] But I was at a slumber party when I was pretty young and um, some of the girls were like, let's dial 9 1 1 and like, just see what hap and just, you know, see what happens and then we'll just hang up and make like a crank call, you know, a prank call to nine one one, a hangup call.
So they did it and I was there at the slumber party, but I
wasn't like part of that, you know, crowd that was doing that.
Um, 'cause I had.
No, I was not the one dialing it. Um, so they did, they literally just called 9 1 1. Someone obviously picked up and then said the whole thing, you know, what is your emergency?
Blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they hung up. Well, of course they 9 1 1 called right back immediately. And the girl's parents answered the phone, of course, because their phone rang. And, um, you know, they're like, oh, a nine one one call was just made, you know, from this address. And so of course her parents just explained like, actually my daughter's having a sleepover, so I bet they, you know, did that.
And, um. But it ended up being okay. You know, of course they just, you know, wanted to make sure everything was fine and nobody got in trouble. But I remember being so scared when the phone rang back, like, I [00:06:00] was like, oh, oh my gosh. Like we're all about to be
like in such big trouble. Yeah, we were like nine years old, you know, but I'm like freaking out that like, someone's getting arrested.
Like, for
sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely scary. But yeah, to do this as an adult, like I would never, I would be terrified. Like they're gonna immediately find my address and find my location and come take me down in the most violent way possible. Like, I'm sure that's not how it works, but yeah, it is. Uh, it's weird to think about adults making prank calls to emergency services for sure.
Or false calls. So Tyler, however, placed a call to Wichita Police and told them that there was a hostage situation and that the father had been shot. There was gasoline everywhere, and this house was about to go up in flames. All of this is pure fiction, but the swiftness of an armed response didn't pause to verify the truth.
Meanwhile, the unsuspecting victim was an entirely innocent man named Andrew Finch. He was a 28-year-old [00:07:00] father of two edit. He was a 28-year-old father of two young children living at that address. The fake one that
who was, what was
his
name?
Melissa: are a little Casey
Mandy: Edit the fake one that Casey gave out. And this man at Edit, this man Andrew Finch is completely innocent of all of this video game drama.
He doesn't have anything to do with it. He doesn't know either one of these two people. He just happens to live at this fake address that Casey gave out. Yeah. So he's totally unrelated to any of this nonsense going on and doesn't know anything about it, has no, no, no reason to suspect that anything is about to happen at his home.
So the local dispatchers received Tyler bar's call. So one important detail from this is that if you're wondering how he made this call, it was from A-V-O-I-P line or an internet based line, uh, from Los Angeles and was [00:08:00] camouflaged as a Wichita phone number, which I freaking hate that they can even do this.
Um,
because
yes, they always use these like spoof phone numbers and like the ones I can't stand, sometimes I'll get a, um, a spoof call and the number will be.
Almost my phone number, but like one digit off. And I'm like,
what in the world's going on? Like, but it's, but why would that make you more likely to answer it?
I don't know. The whole thing is just so weird. Like using fake, being able to use fake numbers and make it seem like you're calling from a completely different location.
Melissa: Mm-hmm. Well, it's very, I mean, I get the
point, Right.
If I see an eight, I still have 8 5 0 area code, which is like North Florida, but when I see an eight five oh Z area, ugh, edit, when I see an eight five oh area code, I very quickly answer because my parents lived there. So I think what could be, you know, what could be going on, and every time I'm like freaking A, they got me again.
Mandy: Yeah. So Tyler calls and makes this [00:09:00] false report and he tells the authorities that his name is Brian and he insisted that deadly violence was imminent at this address, and then he stayed on the line while the police mobilized.
Melissa: Wow. So Wichita patrol officers arrived at the residence. Andrew Finch heard noises outside, so he opened the door to investigate. The officers had set up across the street and in less than 10 seconds after Andrew stepped outside, an officer named Justin Rapp fired a single rifle shot striking Andrew in the chest. According to the metal edit, according to the medical report, bullet fragments shattered the storm door screen and entered his heart and right lung. But the tragedy did not end there for the Finch family. After the shooting officers ordered Andrew's mother and other family members that were inside the house to exit the residence, forcing them all to wait, handcuffed outside in the freezing cold for [00:10:00] over an hour while they're being interrogated. Unreal that this is totally wrong. All the way around that it's not the right person, not the right house,
not the right family. And in the last
moments of this guy's life, the family is being questioned and they have no idea what's happening. I, I really can't think
of a worse circumstance. Yeah. So there is a civil rights lawsuit that's filed on behalf of the family later on, and it's alleged that Andrew's young niece was forced to walk over her dying uncle's body as they left the home.
Like it just gets worse. The Kansas District Attorney refu edit the Kansas district edit. The Kansas da reviewed the DI tried to get away with it and it messed me up again. Edit the Kansas da. Reviewed the case and determined that the officer's actions fell within Kansas' law allowing edit that allowed deadly force if the officer reasonable. Oh, edit. If the officer reasonably believed that someone posed [00:11:00] imminent danger, so there were no charges brought against Officer Rapp in a move that drew widespread criticism from the family and community. Officer Rapp was later promoted to the rank of detective in June, 2022.
Mandy: So detectives immediately zeroed in on the origin of this 9 1 1 call. It was not in Wichita, but thousands of miles away. They traced the cause digital footprint to a voiceover IP line that masked its origin and ultimately led to Los Angeles, where Veteran S swat Tyler Barris was among the few with an outstanding criminal warrant for similar hoaxes.
So investigators then dug through gamer chat logs, and they were able to link Casey Weiner from Ohio to Shane Gaskill from Kansas, who was then linked to Tyler Baris. They found payment for a hit on an opponent and built a chain of evidence tying this trash talk in an online game to an address hundreds of miles away, and an emergency squad racing into the [00:12:00] home of an innocent man.
The evidence was as much virtual as it was physical timestamps on call logs, telecom records, showing the illicit routing of this internet line, and Tyler's prior history of false alarms once he was arrested in Los Angeles, just a day after the shooting, Tyler was swiftly transferred to Kansas and indicted on federal accounts of involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy, and making false emergency calls, which set a legal precedent for swatting as a deadly crime rather than just a prank.
Tyler was later sentenced in 2019 to 20 years in federal prison for the hoax that turned lethal, finer. And Gaskell also faced prison time. They got 15 months and 18 months respectively for their roles, which honestly, like I'm kind of surprised that they only got less than two years of time.
Melissa: I have a
question. Uh, why did they
both get timed? They didn't [00:13:00] both, you know what I'm saying?
Mandy: don't know why they both got time.
Melissa: Because I would think the one that hired the guy.
Mandy: you're right. Just take out what I said. Don't say that. I was surprised to hear. Just
I wasn't surprised. Okay. Edit. Yeah. I was surprised that one of them got any time at all. All right.
Edit. And there were also some ripple effects. In March of 2023, the city of Wichita approved a $5 million settlement to Andrew Finch's children.
It was one of the largest settlements in Kansas history for a police shooting case. The settlement acknowledged that this nonsense call and this false address and the rapid armed response all came together in a horrific way to destroy someone's life. What started as a gamer feud turned into a police shooting, and what was meant as a prank became a national conversation about online responsibility.
But sometimes the chaos doesn't even need a phone call. Sometimes it spreads the old fashioned way through rumors, fear, and a [00:14:00] whole lot of imagination.
Melissa: Okay, Mandy, so before I even say this, this is something that I saw online recently. There was edit, and this has to do with rumors and stuff and how rumors get around. So obviously when we were growing up, the internet wasn't like. But you don't have social media, you don't have all that stuff, right? Do you remember, and do not say what it is, but do you remember the rumor that surrounded Marilyn Manson?
Mandy: Yes, of course I do.
Melissa: Okay. How did all of us know this rumor? None of us had the internet and it wasn't true, but everyone knew it,
Mandy: right?
I don't know
how
Melissa: it okay? Isn't that crazy?
Mandy: Yeah, it is weird. 'cause I do remember.
Melissa: You remember
it? We all know it.
Yeah. So anyway,
going into this story that just popped in my mind when I was first reading this, like how, how do these things happen and what causes one thing to go out there, you know, and becomes so big. So the next story [00:15:00] starts with shadows in the trees. And a flicker of red hair and no, it's not my son. There's also a painted grin and a few shaky cell phone videos from small town America that had everyone asking the same question, what the heck is going on with all of these clowns?
Mandy: no.
Melissa: Immediately?
no.
but I remember this. So by late summer of 2016, clown sightings were popping up across the country in Greenville, sw, edit Greenville, South Carolina, Columbus, Ohio, green Bay, Wisconsin, and everywhere people swore they'd seen silent figures in full clown makeup. Sometimes they said they were carrying knives, sometimes balloons just standing there at the edge of the woods.
There's no context, no explanation, and it's just creepy. So at first, police treated them as weird, but harmless, but then the calls kept coming. In South Carolina, a mother reported, her son [00:16:00] said clowns tried to lure him into the woods near their apartment complex. And of course, that one hits national news 'cause that is
the most scary.
And everyone
freaks out about their kids, of course. So parents are panicked. Schools sent out warnings, and suddenly the clown stories were spreading faster than flu season.
Mandy: Then came the actual threats. Students started making fake clown accounts on Facebook and Instagram, promising school attacks or naming actual individual kids that they were going after. And that's when things got really serious schools in Alabama, Texas and Pennsylvania went on lockdown. Police were showing up at bus stops and parents were walking their kids to class like they were in the middle of the purge.
And people were also actually getting arrested in Michigan. Two 18 year olds in clown suits jumped out of a car and terrified a group of middle schoolers. In Kentucky, an armed homeowner chased a person in a clown costume off of his [00:17:00] porch. In Pennsylvania, a 16-year-old boy was tragically stabbed to death during a fight that reportedly involved someone wearing a clown mask.
It really felt like low budget horror movie edit. It really felt like a low budget horror movie had escaped from the screen. Even the White House had to leave a comment. A press secretary said the president was aware of the incidents and law enforcement was taking them seriously.
I don't need to say this joke about
Melissa: Edit.
Mandy: Okay.
Melissa: Okay.
But it is crazy that
we ever had Ronald McDonald. That's a creepy clown
man. Okay. Edit experts started calling it a modern day mass. Hysteria psychologists said it was a rumor panic. It was the perfect storm of fear, rumor, and of course, social media people shared every photo, every sighting, and every threat, no matter how absurd it was until the story really took on a life of its own. That's when the edit and that's when the twist hit. Remember those [00:18:00] first photos we talked about the clown under the bridge in Green Bay Edit the clown. Did we say that though, that the clown was under the green? I just don't remember saying it.
Mandy: Hmm.
Melissa: We didn't say that
specifically. I'll say it goes back to that first.
How about that? All right, edit
and it really Okay. Edit. And that's when the twist hit. Edit. Early on, there was a picture of this clown under the bridge in Green Bay, and it went viral. Turns out though, that wasn't a threat at all. It was a gorilla marketing stunt for a horror film called Gags. And also, by the way, I don't know that it went too well because I've never heard of that.
Have you heard of gags?
Mandy? You're the horror fan.
Okay. Didn't
go
well. Um, so it
was one filmmaker with a camera and a clown suit that had accidentally unleashed nationwide chaos. By the time that came out, though, of course it's too late, the Hyster [00:19:00] edit, the hysteria has already circled. The Globe.
Reports came from Canada, edit the uk and even Australia. Parents were terrified. Stores were pulling down costumes of clowns and police departments were holding press conferences, begging people to stop calling 9 1 1 over every red wig they saw,
which can you imagine
and edit?
By Halloween, the panic finally fizzled out. The clown sightings dropped off. The hashtags died down, and the nation collectively exhaled. But it left behind this weird scar on pop culture. And a reminder that the internet can take one creamy edit, can take one creepy image and snowball it into full blown fear. The clown panic showed it edit. The clown panic showed us how fast a little fear can spread, especially when social media adds fuel to the fire. But while the hysteria fizzled out with the edit, but while the hysteria fizzled out with that [00:20:00] holiday edit, but while the hysteria fizzled out with the Halloween season, another so-called prank just a year later would prove that real danger doesn't need a edit. Real danger doesn't need a mask. It only takes one reckless choice.
And we'll get into that story after a quick break for edit, after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors. And now back to the episode.
Mandy: So before the break, we were just telling some stories about some, I guess you could call them pranks gone wrong. Just really. Accidental deaths or mishaps in some way or another. So we'll get into the next story that we have for you. Late on the cold winter evening of December 19th in 2017 in Toledo, Ohio, four teenage boys ages 13 and 14 found themselves straddling a bridge over the southbound lanes of Interstate 75.
Already terrifying to even think about. [00:21:00]
Melissa: My first thought.
Mandy: Yeah, the plan was simply to just have a little bit of mischief, but the result was a life that tragically ended. According to court records and police reports, the teens had been walking from the Port Lawrence apartments toward a convenience store. When one of them spotted some rocks and construction sandbags lying on the bridge, they decided to start throwing rocks into the traffic below.
And soon that escalated, one of the boys lifted a worn sandbag over the edge and let it drop. The bag crashed through the windshield of a car racing south on I 75 at roughly 60 miles an hour. Inside was a 22-year-old marquis bird of Warren, Michigan sitting in the passenger seat. He was critically injured when the sandbag made impact and died three days later in the hospital.
So for reference, I had to actually, a, I asked my husband if he knows how much those sandbags weigh on the side of the, you know, the ones that they use in construction that you see on the [00:22:00] side. And he said, usually they're like 50 pounds. So it was a worn sandbag. I imagine maybe it, I don't know, maybe some of the sand was out of it.
But if you're thinking about an object that even weighs half of that, even 25 or 30 pounds falling and hitting you at 60 miles an hour like that is pretty severe.
Melissa: Yeah.
Mandy: Edit,
edit. So the driver of the car was a young woman who had been just offering marquis a lift. She frantically pulled over and called 9 1 1 and said, something just crashed into my car. My friend's not moving. And that call triggered a whole investigation. The police traced tire tracks on the bridge, collected surveillance footage, and even found candy wrappers from the convenience store belonging to the teens.
One of them named Pedro Salinas eventually admitted that he was the one who [00:23:00] threw the sandbag that landed on the car. In the courtroom, the judge laid out the facts in no uncertain terms, no edit.
Oh yeah. No, that's true. All right. Edit.
So in the courtroom, the judge's message was extremely clear. He basically said, you do not drop heavy objects onto a highway and then gamble on the consequences.
The four boys were charged one with murder for the actual throwing of the sandbag, and the other boys were charged with involuntary manslaughter and vehicular vandalism.
Melissa: Yet this edit. Yet the resolution in this case would stir outrage. On April 6th, 2018, Lucas County Juvenile Edit, Lucas County Edit. Lucas County Juvenile Court Judge Denise Navar Cuban Edit. Cobbin sentenced the teens to the Lucas County Youth Treatment Center. Instead of adult prison, three boys would face three year commitments in the youth facility, [00:24:00] the edit.
And the 13-year-old who admitted throwing the bag got a suspended sentence contingent on treatment until age 21. Critics of this including. Including Marquis's family attorney called The Sentences Outrageously Light. He said, you don't take the sandbag and throw it on the side. You took the sandbag and you threw it down there for that boy's death edit to that boy's death.
Mandy: I will say that I do understand and like this is such a hard story. It's a really hard one, and it's so heartbreaking for the man who was killed and was completely innocent in all of this, just driving, you know, riding in a car. Um, but I do think also in cases like this, you have to consider, you have to, you do have to consider that these are children 13 and 14.
They are, they're older and a little bit more mature. But as someone who has a 12-year-old, almost 13-year-old, I've been [00:25:00] through that age 12, 13, 14. Um, and I would definitely say that that age is not really one that understands immediate consequences, like things that can happen. And I don't think that these kids were maliciously throwing this bag over trying to kill someone.
I don't, I think that it was. Actually just some young boys that were like, let's just do this and see what happens. Not thinking that what happens could potentially be someone would die. I don't think that they really had the, uh, maturity and the experience in life to like, you know, kind of foresee that that could happen.
So I think that's something you do have to take into consideration. Be before you're just like, let's throw the book at these kids and, you know, give them a really harsh sentence. Um, because I don't believe that it was done maliciously. I think that they were kids doing stupid things, um, but not necessarily thinking we're gonna try and cause an accident, or we're gonna, you know, we, I think they genuine we're right.
Exactly. I think they genuinely were just like, let's throw these things over. It's fun to watch, you know, what happens, what [00:26:00] do the cars do? You know? know. I just, it's, it's a really tough one.
Melissa: No, I totally agree. And we very much have bias since we do have boys at this age, you know? Um, to, you know, to some degree. I think I definitely look at it through that lens for sure, because I think the same thing, I didn't think the sentence was. So terrible.
But I also understand being
the family who says, who cares?
They killed, you know, they killed our family member. And it doesn't matter if they meant to do it. How many times do we hear that? It doesn't really matter the intent, but they did. But I do think like if the goal of, we're not even done with this story, but if the goal of, uh, rehabilitation or edit, if the goal of prison and jail, it's rehabilitation.
The best thing that could happen is for these boys to really understand what happened, what they did, how to change their life from there, how to make better decisions and to go from there. But not to say everyone's going to prison [00:27:00] for
life because that doesn't do,
it doesn't bring him back and it doesn't do a whole lot.
But I'm saying that as somebody with, you know, a kid this age, not somebody whose family member has had this
happen. So it's, you know, very different.
Okay. Edit. Um. Just months after the incident though, Ohio lawmakers reacted and the state mandated protective fencing on highway overpasses above major contract edit above major traffic corridors. In fact, at the Indiana Avenue overpass where Bur was killed, new fencing went up in early 2018. Edit. Okay, edit. And while every fatal prank doesn't come from boredom edit, and not every fatal prank comes from boredom or curiosity, some of them are planned, filmed, and uploaded for an audience.
Mandy: the next story takes place on February 5th, 2021. It was a Friday night in Hermitage, [00:28:00] Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. 20-year-old Timothy Wilkes had big YouTube dreams. He wanted to grow his channel film, outrageous pranks and go viral. The setup that night was supposed to be simple stage, a fake robbery for laughs.
He and his friend armed themselves with butcher knives and decided to approach a group of strangers in the parking lot of an urban air trampoline park, yelling as if they were robbing them. So this idea, according to his partner, was to record the victim's reactions and post the clip online. What Timothy didn't count on was that one of those strangers, David Starnes edit, David Starnes Jr.
Was a 23-year-old with a legal handgun who didn't know that this was a prank to him. This was a real armed robbery. He later told police, he acted in self-defense. He fired his gun hitting Wilkes once, and the prank ended instantly and so [00:29:00] did Wilkes's life. When officers arrived, they found Wilkes dead at the scene and the knives nearby.
The friend who was helping film the prank just kept repeating. It was just for YouTube. Police immediately detained and questioned everyone in the area. The department's initial statement was blunt. They said the incident appeared to have been part of a robbery prank video for YouTube.
Melissa: Investigators determined that Starnes had fired edit, I'm gonna say his first name. Edit. Investigators determined that David had fired in self-defense, and after consulting with the da, they announced that no charges would be filed because in Tennessee, if someone reasonably believes they're in imminent danger of death or harm, lethal force is edit or serious harm.
Lethal force is legally justified. Police cap. The police captain called it a tragedy, but not a crime. But the fallout online was Swift creators across [00:30:00] YouTube and TikTok weighed in. They questioned, you know, whether the chase for clips had gone too, edit, whether the chase for clicks had gone too far. And there's other prank channels.
The ones that are famous for these fake kidnappings or armed robberies, those suddenly go quiet as they should because Timothy's death proved what everyone in the social experiment scene already feared, that when you blur the line edit, when you blur the line between fiction and danger, someone might get hurt. And this edit, and this wasn't the first time back in 2019, another prankster was shot at. It was shot at while pretending to rob someone in a parking lot. But Wilkes's case really became the most fatal prank at the most famous fatal prank on the uh, edit. Wilkes's case became the most famous fatal prank of the social media era, era edit era. It was covered by the AP CNN and [00:31:00] really every major outlet within 24 hours, not because of the stunt itself, but because of what it symbolized this escalating race for online attention. Friends later told reporters that Wilkes was a good kid and he wasn't a hardened criminal. He grew up in east Tennessee.
He worked odd jobs and really wanted to make people laugh. But as any creator knows, the algorithm rewards extremes, bigger stunts, crazier reactions, higher risk, and Timothy had started filming pranks edit. Timothy had actually already edit. Timothy had actually only started filming pranks a few months before, and the final one ended up killing him. The line between entertainment and danger is really getting thinner all the time. And Timothy Wilkes's death proved exactly how deadly that blur can be. This one makes me so sad
too.
because, because it's such a dumb thing to
do. It's such a, a like dumb thing. I I shouldn't say,
but it
really is
edit. [00:32:00] But
it's one of those things at sitting here at 42 years old, I say, yeah, if you walk up to somebody in a parking lot with a knife, they're going to assume you're gonna try and hurt
them. I don't have that kind of brain where I'm thinking like, even that would be funny.
So even if it all works out great to me,
that's not funny. It's never gonna be funny. So it makes me really sad that like, that's how that got out
there, that like this story is
out there, but um. Also in a state like Tennessee, or like that's like doing it in Florida, where it's like we have, we have open carry now.
Like you could easily, you're going to get taken down if you try to do this on
somebody, you have to, you know? So it makes me
really sad. And he's 20, he's not a 13-year-old like the other kids in the other story. He's still young, but like at 20, I do expect
you to know more. I mean, this is this. Yeah.
Edit. These [00:33:00] are hard,
Mandy: Yeah, they are hard. I agree. Some of these stories, but that's why it's so like these accidental, like people aren't meaning for anyone to die or you
Melissa: right?
Mandy: yeah, these are really tough ones.
Melissa: Yeah. But after the break, we're gonna come back to a time before influencer culture. When a marketing stunt edit. When a marketing stunt meant to promote a cartoon show, managed to paralyze an entire city. But first, let's take one last break. Edit. But first, let's take one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors, and now back to the episode.
Mandy: All right, so as promised, we are going to get into a couple more stories of kind of accidental deaths, pranks gone wrong, if you will, or just in this case, the scare of an entire city. So on the morning of January 31st, 2007, commuters in Boston and the inner suburbs were simply going about their routines and doing the whole rush hour shuffle.
But then something [00:34:00] peculiar happened, there was an ordinary orange decel battery pack with exposed wires and a taped circuit board seen blinking underneath the I 93 overpass at Sullivan Square. By 9:00 AM the Boston Police Department bomb squad had been alerted road lanes on I 93 were closed. Bridges were shut down, and transit lines were delayed.
As helicopters hovered above the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority had discovered a device that looked like something far more sinister than a toy because of the batteries and wires and exposed circuitry. Combo officials treated this as an improvised explosive device or an IED. What no one on the sidewalk realized at that moment was that the device was actually just part of a gorilla advertising campaign.
The parent company, Turner Broadcasting System, via its late night adult swim outlet had quietly commissioned around [00:35:00] 40 LED placards to promote the upcoming theatrical release of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. So the characters depicted were the Moona Knights. They were pixelated, alien creatures giving the middle finger.
They were mounted to bridges, train stations, and overpasses in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville. This is very extra.
Melissa: Very extra
and.
Mandy: the
Melissa: I know. Yeah, I know of. But it's not something I've really watched
Mandy: Well, considering what it is, right? This is a lot for what that show is like. This is they really were trying with the marketing here for sure.
Melissa: Well, and the unfortunate thing is I hadn't heard of the story until right now, so I don't think it
did that great. Um, but the marketing firm interference in Edit Interference Incorporated sent the units to Boston in mid-January. So local artists, including Pete Zeer Brodsky, and [00:36:00] Sean Stevens, actually were the ones to install them overnight.
And the suggested sites for these devices were in areas of high traffic, highly visible places with an urban infrastructure edit with an urban infrastructure. And these two were paid roughly $300 each for this job. For days, the devices sat in places unnoticed. Edit local officials describe them as being strange but benign. But the morning of January 31st, edit, but the morning of January 31st changed everything at Sullivan Square. The MBTA staff reported the first board officials saw batteries, wiring, and tape, and they couldn't immediately identify it. And of course, in this post nine 11 climate, uh, every unknown package screams threat. I have a story at the end of this, about that within two hours, similar boards were found under the Longfellow Bridge in the Boston University. Bridge and boat traffic at a and boat traffic on the [00:37:00] Charles River was suspended, and the city's response scaled fast. There's hundreds of officers, bomb squad personnel, traffic shutdowns, media foaming at the mouth.
To get the story first, the Boston Globe described it as a citywide frenzy.
Mandy: Edit. Attorney General Martha Coley remarked that the edit, that the device had a very sinister appearance, battery behind it and wires, and that was enough for law enforcement to treat it seriously. Back in the marketing room, Turner Broadcasting was scrambling. The campaign was also active in other cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle, but only Boston reacted this way.
The company issued a public apology and agreed to a $2 million settlement. It was $1 million to cover Boston Police Department's costs that they had incurred, and $1 million to the US Department of Homeland Security Fund. The Cartoon Network General [00:38:00] Manager, Jim Samples, actually resigned. Legally, the two installers were arrested that evening on charges of placing a hoax device under Massachusetts law and disorderly conduct, but prosecutors later dropped criminal intent charges and argued it was difficult to prove that they meant to cause panic, and they just accepted community service instead.
Melissa: Good, because that seems really dumb that this huge company hires you to do this. You obviously think, well, they know the laws.
Mandy: right. We're not gonna get in trouble. Right.
Melissa: I'm gonna get in trouble. Yeah, That's crazy.
Mandy: but the cultural ripples were vast. Security scholars call the event a textbook case of panic discourse. Bruce Shiner called Boston's Reaction, a non terrorist embarrassment and many locals felt the city had overreacted. One blogger kind of like remarked that it was an LED, not an IED.
So flash forward years later, the show's creators revisit this incident with [00:39:00] bittersweet reflection. They claim they had no involvement in the marketing plan yet they acknowledged that the stunt changed the trajectory of these Gorilla promotions. I actually hate those, uh, weird
gorilla promotion things
where it's like I just,
I don't know.
I don't get it. It's not for
me.
Melissa: it on a billboard and
Mandy: Yeah, yeah. So the Aqua Teen Hunger Force incident was absurd. It was terrifying and just a perfect storm of misunderstanding and fear. But sometimes the danger isn't in what people think they see. It's what they think they can control. And for one young couple in Minnesota, their attempt to control a viral moment ended in a very preventable tragedy.
Melissa, you'll have to let me know if you remember this story that you're about to get us into. Um, I remember when this one happened and, and again, thinking, what were they thinking?
Melissa: Yeah, I do not. So this was a new one for me. But this last story takes us to a modest home along Highway [00:40:00] 75 in Halstead, Minnesota, where 19-year-old Mona Edit, where 19-year-old Mona Lisa Perez and her boyfriend, 22-year-old Pedro Ru, as the third began setting up a stunt that they believed would make their YouTube channel explode. I actually can't believe at the end of this that everyone involved in these YouTube issues did not sue
YouTube. cause I feel
like I don't, I feel like they could have some kind of a case for sure. So the couple made prank videos for YouTube, and according to neighbors, they were always chasing this bigger audience and that I edit. That night, the idea was reckless. Mona Lisa would fire a 50 caliber desert eagle pistol into a hardcover encyclopedia that Pedro had pressed to his chest. Pedro told Mona Lisa that the bullet edit that the book would stop the bullet. He reassured her and said they had tested the idea, edit that he attested [00:41:00] the idea, and it was safe. Mona Lisa was actually pregnant with a couple's second child and their 3-year-old daughter was standing nearby. Video evidence later released by prosecutors, showed Pedro introducing the gun and the ammunition to the camera like he was teasing some kind of big reveal. He referred to himself as the crazy Pedro and explained that they wanted to see whether a 50 caliber round could be stopped by a book off camera.
Mona Lisa cried and pleaded to stop this experiment, but ultimately she raised the handgun from about a foot away and fired. That's where you really lost me a foot away. I mean, I guess you don't want to shoot him, and if you're not good with guns, you'd have to be kind of
Mandy: This is such a dumb idea for multiple reasons. Um, but 50 caliber is a huge round. Like it's stupid to do it with anything even smaller. It's stupid to do this at all. Um, but 50 caliber, come on. Come on.
Melissa: [00:42:00] This was just, this was one of those things where you're thinking, uh, of the here and now, and not at all about what the consequences, like if, oh my gosh. If there's anything to learn
from this, uh, whole episode is talk to your kids about consequences and what
happens later on because it's just so
sad. So edit. Did I already say okay, edit?
No,
Okay.
Mandy: say the bullet worked through like theia.
Melissa: Thank you. Okay. So the bullet of course ripped through the encyclopedia and went straight into Pedro's chest. He collapsed on the grass before the video ended, and Mona Lisa dialed 9 1 1 in a panic and begged the operator for help as neighbors ran towards the scene. Sadly, paramedics, so sorry. Sadly, paramedics could not save Pedro.
Mandy: Investigators treated this like any shooting death. They secured the weapon. They pulled the video, interviewed witnesses and [00:43:00] collected statements. The story that emerged was painfully consistent. Pedro had been pushing for bigger riskier stunts to grow their YouTube audience, and relatives told reporters that he wanted fame and had a daredevil streak.
The criminal complaint noted that Mona Lisa fired once at very close range because Pedro insisted that the book would protect him. She told the police it was meant to be a viral social experiment, not a killing. Prosecutors charged her the next day with second degree manslaughter. The law treated intent and outcome.
Separately, no one argued that Mona Lisa wanted Pedro dead, but the statute did not require intent to kill only culpable negligence that created an unreasonable risk. In December of 2017, she pleaded guilty to second degree manslaughter. In March of 2018, a Norman County judge sentenced her under the plea agreement to 180 days in jail, served in a staggered manner and 10 years of supervised [00:44:00] probation.
The court permanently barred her from possessing firearms and prohibited her from profiting from telling the story of Pedro's death, meaning she was not allowed to have any book deals or take any paid interviews. The judge and county attorney emphasized that she had relied on Pedro's assurances, but the risk was obvious and extreme.
When the evidence videos were released months later, the public saw exactly how the couple had framed it for YouTube. It was a spectacle that was just engineered for clicks. Prosecutors included those clips to show premeditation in the sense of planning the stunt not planning a homicide. So they're showing that, you know, this wasn't something that Mona Lisa just planned on her own.
You can hear Pedro in the video discussing the gun and the bullet, and you can watch the setup for a moment. You know that if they had been right, it would've looked like magic. You could see in the video that they were clearly setting up this stunt,
but instead the video just became a permanent record of [00:45:00] irreversible harm.
And it is the clearest, cautionary tale of this algorithm, escalator that you know, we're all on and the pressure to really up the ante until physics really catches up with you. Like you were saying, Melissa, it's so like all of these stories, but especially these ones, like for these YouTube pranks, like.
It is never worth, like, I, it's, it's, I feel like the world that we live in is so, it is so you wanna get more likes, you wanna get more attention on YouTube, you wanna get more followers. And especially now in this day and age where people are monetizing their social media cha, you know, outlets and just doing anything they can to go viral.
Um, but these, uh. It's so sad to think about people literally losing their lives because they're doing a YouTube prank or they're doing any, anything like this. Just silly stuff. But yeah, it's so important to teach our kids, like you said, about consequences and thinking ahead. Like, just trying to think about like what could happen, you know?
Like what's the [00:46:00] worst? Like, I, I, you, I hate to even be that way, you know? I don't ever wanna say what's the worst thing that could happen, but like, truly like, what is the worst thing that could happen? Because like, that is something that could happen. So like, think about that, like the fact that like, yes, it might be the worst possible scenario, but it's still a possibility.
So like you don't want that to actually happen. So like, I don't know. It's just, it's hard though. It's hard to predict consequences, especially younger people
Melissa: totally agree. And I do actually this, uh, sentencing made sense to me because she really, uh. It, uh, obviously the intent was not there, but you still have to have some
consequences around this. But the fact that these two babies didn't end up, you know, losing both parents to prison, I think is commendable to,
you know, I hope everybody's family was okay
with this, but for this, I was like, no, that actually makes sense because it, they had enough evidence with these videos to know it was never, it was never about that.
It was [00:47:00] never to kill him and that he was encouraging it. So, I don't know. I just thought like, okay, in this case I do understand where this came from for sure,
and it makes sense why there's so many vastly different laws and different edit, different charges and different, um, consequences. But yes, again, like you were saying, and I said before, talk to your kids about consequences and YouTube videos and how likes and stuff are just
not that important.
Mandy: Yeah.
Melissa: all so temporary.
Mandy: Yeah. All right guys. Thank you so much for listening to this Thursday episode. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story.
Melissa: Have a great
week.
