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YouTuber Jailed For Killing Her Boyfriend In Botched 'Shooting' Stunt

YouTuber Jailed For Killing Her Boyfriend In Botched 'Shooting' Stunt

Monalisa Perez, 20, of Halstad, Minnesota has been sentenced to six months in prison for accidentally shooting her boyfriend dead last year.

Chris Ogden

Chris Ogden

An American YouTube vlogger who accidentally shot her boyfriend to death while filming a stunt for her YouTube channel has been sentenced to six months in prison.

Monalisa Perez, 20, from Halstad, Minnesota, fatally wounded her boyfriend Pedro Ruiz III last June when she fired a gun into a encyclopedia Ruiz was holding to his chest from just a foot away.

Instead of the bullet lodging in the book as planned, it accidentally passed through, killing 22-year-old Ruiz in front of the couple's three-year-old child and almost 30 onlookers at the pair's Halstad home.

Northwest Regional Corrections

Perez pled guilty to second-degree manslaughter last December, just before Christmas. Had she been convicted at trial, she would have faced up to 10 years in prison.

However, yesterday a Minnesota judge sentenced Perez to 180 days in prison and 10 years of supervised probation, as was expected due to the terms of her plea agreement.

In what might seem a weird approach to a UK audience, the judge told Perez she could serve her time in 10-day increments over the next three years. She has also been banned from owning firearms for life.

Perez and Ruiz regularly posted videos of much tamer pranks online to her YouTube channel as they made a bid to become Internet famous.

Other stunts the pair filmed before Ruiz's death included her falling out of a tree or jumping into a swimming pool, as well as Perez serving Ruiz a doughnut covered in baby powder.

Chillingly, just hours before Ruiz was fatally shot, Perez tweeted that the pair had planned to film 'one of the most dangerous videos ever'. She added that it was Ruiz who had come up with the idea for the video and not her.

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.

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

After pulling the trigger, Perez quickly called 911 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.

Featured Image Credit: YouTube

Topics: accident, News, US News, crime, youtuber, YouTube