A 22-year-old man is dead after his pregnant girlfriend shot him in a stunt gone terribly wrong.
Pedro Ruiz – of Halstad, Minnesota – was pronounced dead at the scene after police arrived at his house Monday night.
“He had told me about an idea. I said, don’t do it, don’t do it. Why are you going to use a gun? Why? Because, we want more viewers.” Ruiz’s aunt, Claudia Ruiz said in an interview with Valley News Live. She says that Ruiz gave his girlfriend a 50 caliber handgun and told her to shoot at a book he was holding while their 3-year-old child watched.
They told family they had tested the stunt and were doing it to get more YouTube views.
“They were in love,” Claudia Ruiz told the TV station. “They loved each other. It was just a prank gone wrong. It shouldn’t of happened like this. It shouldn’t have happened at all.”
Family members told the Pioneer Press that the couple had recorded pranks in the past – but most were harmless, like a doughnut dusted with talcum powder instead of powdered sugar.
Ruiz’s girlfriend, Monalisa Perez, is the mother of their first child. She also is 7 months pregnant.
Perez has been charged with reckless discharge of a firearm.
