As YouTubers want to get as many eyeballs as possible to their videos, some go to great lengths. Whilst there is nothing really wrong of really working hard to get as many as viewers as possible, what is wrong is when they do stunts that they are not well-prepared for. And if these stunts go awry, then they lead to consequence that can be fatal.
This was the case of Mona Lisa Perez, who is behind the La Monalisa YouTube Channel, where she fatally shot her boyfriend last June 2017 when they were making a video in which she shot with a Desert Eagle .50 AE handgun at a book the her boyfriend was holding thinking that bullet will be stopped by the book. It was a haphazard stunt and she got charged with manslaughter.
The Pioneer Press reported last 19 December 2017 that Perez pleaded guilty in Norman County District Court to second-degree manslaughter. The plea agreement would see Perez 180 days in prison and 10 years of supervised provision though the judge will do the final sentencing in February 2018. She won’t be able to make money off the video of the shooting and will be barred from owning a firearm for the rest of her life.
She does not need to spend 180 days in jail in one go. She will be spending 30 days in jail each year for three years and will be then serve the remainder on home electronic monitoring according to the Minneapolis Tribune.
According to Perez, she initially resisted using the gun but her boyfriend, Pedro Ruiz, persuaded her by showing a book that he shot earlier and the bullet hadn’t gone through. She tweeted before they did the video that:
She then called the 911 after the incident where responders found Ruiz at their home in Minnesota with a gunshot wound and tried to revive him. Ruiz died at the scene.