YouTuber Admits To Killing Her Boyfriend In Stunt Gone Wrong

A 20-year-old YouTube vlogger has admitted accidentally shooting her boyfriend dead while filming a stunt they had planned to upload to their YouTube channel.

Monalisa Perez, from Halstad in the US state of Minnesota, fatally wounded her boyfriend Pedro Ruiz III on 26 June of this year when she fired a gun into a book Ruiz was holding to his chest from just a foot away.

According to Perez, the pair expected the bullet to lodge in the book, but instead it passed through and hit Ruiz, 22, in the chest, killing him.

Credit: Police handout

This past Friday Perez pled guilty to second-degree manslaughter. Had she been convicted at trial, she would have faced up to 10 years in prison.

However, as part of her plea agreement, she is now likely to face six months in prison and 10 years of supervised probation.

According to the Pioneer Press, however, a judge will have the final say on what happens to Perez when she is sentenced in February.

Reports state that Perez will also be banned for life from owning firearms of any kind.

According to court reports, Perez and Ruiz regularly posted videos of their pranks online to her YouTube channel as they tried to build an online following.

Other stunts filmed by the pair included Ruiz falling out of a tree, Ruiz jumping into a swimming pool and Perez serving Ruiz a doughnut covered in baby powder.

Just hours before Ruiz was accidentally shot, Perez tweeted to her followers that she and Ruiz planned to shoot 'one of the most dangerous videos ever', saying the idea was Ruiz's, not hers.

Perez told police that Ruiz had convinced her the stunt was safe by showing her other books he had shot where the bullet hadn't passed through.

Using a GoPro camera, the pair filmed Perez shooting a Desert Eagle .50 calibre handgun at Ruiz as he held a 1.5in (4cm) thick encyclopaedia to his chest.

The couple performed the stunt at their Halstad home, in front of their three-year-old child and almost 30 onlookers.

Perez quickly called emergency services to say she had accidentally shot her boyfriend, who was later pronounced dead at the scene.

At the time of the shooting, Perez was pregnant with the couple's second child.

Topics: News, US News, stunt, YouTube

Chris Ogden

Chris Ogden is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from the University of East Anglia with degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing before completing his NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. Chris has previously written for the independent culture magazine The Skinny, among other publications.

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