Pedro Ruiz III, 22, was a YouTube star looking for online glory. With just 218 members, he and his girlfriend hoped to attain 300,000 subscribers. Ruiz understood they’d have to do something crazy to get popular on the internet, and his girlfriend, Monalisa Perez, 20, was going to assist him.
They were eager to try anything and felt they had the ideal strategy. Ruiz and Perez were dead set on becoming internet celebrities—or perish trying. Sadly for him and his fiancée, that’s precisely what occurred to Ruiz, and now a video of the minutes leading up to the young man’s deadly prank has been leaked.
Ruiz and his pregnant girlfriend traveled to a carnival in Minnesota on his final day, where he videotaped himself on a “scary” ride. But he didn’t want to limit himself to carnival attractions or pranks for his admirers. He wished to elevate his YouTube videos to the next level, all for the sake of hits. As a result, the pair decided to release a video of a daring act.
Ruiz planned on having Perez shoot an encyclopedia while holding it in front of his chest. She planned to do the feat using a.50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol, advertised as the world’s most powerful firearm. “Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. HIS idea not MINE,” Perez tweeted of the impending video.
However, they simply demonstrated that neither of them understood anything about weapons when they proceeded with the so-called spoof movie, which showed a pregnant woman shooting her lover. Norman County, Minnesota, prosecutors have already revealed the disastrous last video and transcripts.
Following a protracted rant over the prank’s setup, it was almost time to go back to the program, but Perez was having second thoughts. She is afraid she can’t do it, darling. very afraid, she said to her boyfriend as she clutched the .50-caliber Desert Eagle, according to the video’s transcript. She had every reason to be terrified, as it turns out.
At the time of Ruiz’s death, Perez was expecting her second child. Their child would be born months after his mother had murdered his father. Perez replies, almost prophetically: What’s going to happen to her life if she murders him? No, this isn’t acceptable, but no one knows for sure if it was out of genuine concern for Ruiz’s safety or for the sake of the so-called hoax film.
Ruiz addresses the camera in the published segment of the stunt footage, stating, if he is going to die, he is pretty much ready to go to paradise right now. He’ll be ready for Jesus if he dies. He probably won’t welcome him into the pearly gates because of how ridiculous this is, he said, but he is certain that his girlfriend will strike the book and not him. Clutching a hardback encyclopedia to his chest, he encouraged her to shoot. She opened fire while the cameras were rolling.
The bullet pierced the book and killed Pedro Ruiz III. Monalisa Perez was eventually found guilty of second-degree manslaughter and barred from ever owning a handgun again. If she had gone to trial and been found guilty, she might have faced up to ten years in prison. Fortunately for her, the prosecutor in charge of her case said that Ruiz’s family members agreed to a plea bargain. After accepting the arrangement, the mother-of-two was sentenced to 180 days in prison but permitted to serve half of her sentence in increments of 30 days each year for the following three years.
While she is not seen in the leaked clip, the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Aaliyah, was there when the shooting happened as her parents were filming the video. She was there when her mother dialed 911 as her dad lay dying. They were making a YouTube video when something went awry. Please hurry up, Perez said to the 911 operator.
This is obviously a tragic narrative about our fame-seeking culture and the detrimental implications of a society obsessed with its social media presence. Individuals are willing to go to great lengths to get their names out there in order to achieve popularity and build a fan base. So what exactly is it accomplishing? A young guy died as a result of a dumb YouTube prank, and his girlfriend was convicted of his murder. He was never able to meet his son. His two children now had no father, and their mom will never be the same.
It’s tragic that this young couple believed that the way to go ahead was to do risky acts and film them for individuals who won’t care that this young guy is no longer alive but would instead look for the next internet phenomenon or viral video to entertain them. Our culture has taken a hit. We will witness more needless tragedies like this one until we pull it back from the edge. It’s time to teach our children how to go ahead in life. It’s not via stupid or risky movies; it’s through hard labour. This family of four would have fared much better if the young mom and dad had learned that lesson sooner rather than later.
