A pregnant Minnesota teen was charged with second-degree manslaughter for the June 26, 2017 death of her boyfriend in a dangerous prank performed in an attempt to expand the couple’s social media influence.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Monalisa Perez, now 20 and a mother of two, was sentenced Wednesday to a 180-day jail term for fatally shooting her partner Pedro Ruiz, 22, the father of her two children. Ruiz asked Perez, who was pregnant at the time, to fire a .50-caliber firearm at close range toward a hardcover encyclopedia he held above his chest.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, the couple intended to share the risky stunt on their popular YouTube channel, but the stunt went horribly wrong: The bullet pierced the book and critically injured Ruiz. He died before first responders could airlift him to a hospital.
The BBC reports that Perez pleaded guilty rather than risk a maximum 10 years of prison time. For the first six months, she will spend 10 days in jail and 10 days out, totaling 90 days behind bars. She will then be confined to her home for the remaining 90 days of her sentence. Perez can serve her time where she currently lives in South Dakota.
Perez will also receive supervised probation, a lifetime ban on owning firearms, and will be prohibited from gaining financial benefit from the case.
Though the sentence may seem light to some, Norman County Attorney James Brue said “the reality [is] that this foolish stunt was dreamed up, planned and executed by Pedro Ruiz, and the defendant wrongfully and tragically relied on his assurances that the stunt was safe.”
Ruiz reportedly convinced Perez to do the deed by showing her a prior experiment he conducted where a bullet did not exit a similar book’s back cover.
According to the BBC, couple’s three-year-old child was nearby when her father was shot, and 30 onlookers also witnessed the incident.
The two reportedly had hoped their online antics would net at least 300,000 YouTube subscribers in order to attract lucrative advertising and sponsorship deals.
[Feature image: Monalisa Perez and Pedro Ruiz]
