Teenage boy seriously injured after imitating movie (yet another 'Jackass' stunt gone wrong)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune ^ | 4.18.03

[mhking]

ST. PAUL - A Hastings boy is recovering from third-degree burns on 65 percent of his body after setting himself on fire to imitate stunts from "Jackass: The Movie."

"He is going to live," his mother told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "He was on life support for about six days. He will be in the hospital a minimum of two months. He has already had three major surgeries, and I don't know how many more he'll have."

[mhking]

Not funny, but pingworthy, nonetheless....

"Hold muh beer 'n watch this!" PING....

If you want on or off this list, please let me know!

[conservativeinbflo.]

what a DUMB@SS!! i'm sorry... should i feel sorry? because i don't. my sympathy goes to the burn victims who were in an accident. not some MTV-watching, nintendo-playing drone!

[Happygal]

Jackass is just one of those tv programmes that I simply don't understand. I watch it (it's screened on Ireland's RTE channel), but I invariably shake my head incredulously at the antics of Johnny Knoxville and 'Partyboy' Chris Pontius.

[demosthenes the elder]

please, lie to me if you have to, but tell me that this little zippo burned his testicles off.

[AppyPappy]

Yet another mere coincidence

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Chief Deputy Dave Bellows said the parents shouldn't be blamed.

My bet is that the human barbecue and his parents have protected minority status.

[SunStar]

Should I feel bad for thinking this poor schmuck deserves what he gets?

[Bohemund]

"Jackass: The Movie" has no such stunt in it.

The TV show did have an episode, first aired years ago, in which Johnny Knoxville donned a flame-retardant suit covered in raw meat and lay on a grill.

This kid is just a moron.

[American Soldier]

Bah...before we had so many freaking traffic cops in this country, the kid would have been out drag-racing. A certain number of kids pretty much always engage in risky behavior. They can't drop out and join the Marines at 15 anymore, so they find stupid (as opposed to noble) ways to get adventure.

I blame the feminization fo the Boy Scouts, which used to be a worthwhile organization. The kid should have been put in the Marine Corps cadets early on, and maybe this would have been avoided. We are hunters by nature and life in suburbia makes young males edgy ... exposure to healthy adventure activities will help get some of this out of their systems.

[Joe 6-pack]

Should've been a, "hold muh min'ral spirits," alert.

[Darksheare]

With all the stupid and crazy stuff my brother and I did as children (Detonating the back yard for one.) we NEVER did anything THAT stupid.
We just joined Field Artillery when we enlisted...

[Victoria Delsoul]

If there wasn't so much naivete, and frankly, stupidity out there, people wouldn't have voted twice for Bill Clinton. I guess it's just in the genes. Sorry to hear about this poor kid.

[fourdeuce82d]

With all the stupid and crazy stuff I did as a child (Making fuel-air explosives from oxy-acetylene rigs.) I NEVER did anything THAT stupid.

I just joined a mortar platoon when I enlisted...*grin*

[TomServo]

The newspaper agreed not to identify the mother in order to keep her son's identity private.

He won't be hard to spot.

[Cobra64]

The kid has just been awarded the April 18th Darwin Award.

[Williams]

Yes. You don't even know the details. I assume there was some sort of "protection" from the fire that didn't work. Kids and adults often do stupid things, and i think the really stupid and arrogant A*****s on Free Republic are the ones that enjoy not only laughing at tragedy, but actually angrily go on how the stupid kid "deserved it." easy to say until it happens to your kid or nephew. And anybody who answers and says they would say the same about their own kid or nephew is in my estimation a creep or a liar.

Maybe you're all 45 years old but as I have aged and have an 11 year old, I get the feeling that many people at FR are spoiled "kids" who have no idea what real suffering means to real people. Go check how long I've been on FR if that rings your bells.

[Moose4]

OK, so in the past two days, we have:

- Kid who gets blinded looking down the barrel of a potato gun which fires a live frog into his face;

- Kid who sets himself on fire after seeing "Jackass"

Sounds to me like we've got developing cases of SARS: Sudden Acute Repeated Stupidity.

}:-)4

[IYAS9YAS]

In my family, if you get hurt, they laugh first at the stupidity that caused the hurt and then ask if you're ok. My wife has gotten used to this. To quote my Dad, "The wage of stupidity is pain."

I feel no sympathy for these idiots who do this or for the parents whose children (read unsupervised misreants) do this. When I was in my teens, I had responsibilities after school that kept me busy until my parents came home. The problem is, these kids' parents don't know where they are half the time and don't care...unless, of course, something happens to their precious and they can sue.

[Luna]

Staring into the video camera, the 14-year-old boy says, "Don't try this at home" and then sets himself on fire.

So why on earth didn't he listen to himself? He knew he was doing something dangerous and very stupid, but he did it anyway. It boggles the mind.

[Bullish]

A product of 'publik edgucashun'?

You think he knows that skin burns now?

[contessa machiaveli]

this is a major darwin alert. i'm glad the youth will survive but lets hope his ability to procreate has been put to a stop.

[weikel]

Its his own fault for being a moron.

[July 4th]

Yeah, as soon as I read that line, I thought the same thing. It's pretty ironic that, while performing a dangerous stunt at home, he prefaces it with "Don't try this at home."

[Darksheare]

Wonder if there's some sort of psychotic semi-magnetic attraction towards joining up in MOS's that require stuff to go boom.. once having done such oddly insane stuff as children?
Gotta be some sort of pre-disposition towards loud bangs and bright flashy lights.

[Dementon]

Staring into the video camera, the 14-year-old boy says, "Don't try this at home" and then sets himself on fire.

So why on earth didn't he listen to himself?

Maybe he wasn't at home...

[lepton]

Gee, that sounds like the teen said: "Gee, that looks really stupid. I've got to show my friends how stupid it is."

[xJones]

Wow, 65% 3rd degrees burns.....but looking back, I did some really dumb stunts as a teenager and was lucky, although setting fire to myself was not one of them.

[Chuckster]

How I spent the "Summer of Love" 1968

A fellow Redleg. I love blowing things up!

[Chuckster]

Actually, in my case anyway, it was an accident. I arrived in RVN with a clerk typist MOS during the Tet Offensive of '68. they were just counting off bodies and sending us out to field units that needed men (No girls in the Army back then). I wound up getting OJT as a Field Artillery Crewman and spent the next fourteen years with a 13 series MOS. I learned to love loud noises and eventually became a Chief of Fire and Smoke (Chief of Firing Battery)

[af_vet_rr]

I thought we had the makings of a Darwin candidate here, if a 14 year old is stupid enough to set themselves on fire....they definitely are on a path to removing themselves from the gene pool.

They aren't going to hold the parents reponsible...amusing, they should at least hold them responsible for not imparting some kind of common sense into the kid. We had a kid here locally that fell off of a roof, after watching Harry Potter and thinking they could fly on a broom (I guess - the details were hazy). At first there was a bit of an outcry, but the parents bought the kid the video and the kid was home alone, and charges were almost pressed against the parents. These kinds of cases, yeah, the kid is just asking for it, but it's obvious the parents didn't teach them things like "jumping off of a roof is stupid" and "fire is hot and burns you", etc.

Bad thing, Lieberman or another liberal will use things like this to justify their rants against movies, guns, etc. when it's clear the blame lies in either the kid being an idiot or the parents being idiots, or a combo of both.

[Paul Atreides]

It's interesting, the amount of worthless drivel that comes out of an industry filled with people who claim to be so much more enlightened than the rest of us.

[ladylib]

You're right. Kids can't even play kickball in school anymore -- too violent, someone might get hurt, someone might feel bad if he isn't chosen for a team.

Life for boys today sucks.

[green team 1999]

one word for that kid, "fool".

today while switching channels did see a video of a teenager(older)using a skateboard on a handrail,turn around and falls face first-no hands (look ma no hands),broken jaw on three places,wiring of jaw for two months.

[SunStar]

I have aged and have an 11 year old, I get the feeling that many people at FR are spoiled "kids" who have no idea what real suffering means to real people.

I am quite sure that your 11 year old won't be the next in a long line of "Jackass" emulators. I'm sure you are a good parent. It's just that this story keeps happening. If someone is that stupid to set themselves on fire after it's been done over and over, they certainly do, in a sense, deserve it. No need to be offended or try to offend me. Have a great day!

[Sweet_Sunflower29]

My 14 year old stepson also lives in Hastings.

I had to call...just to make sure.

[savedbygrace]

We just joined Field Artillery when we enlisted...

Know how an old artillery man goes about trying to sell a chicken?

"HEY, YA WANNA BUY A CHICKEN?"

Well, when the civil war re-enactor told us this, we laughed for minutes. Coulda had something to do with the volume of his yelling, though.

[Servant of the Nine]

Vacuuming out the Gene Pool.

So9

[Darksheare]

I loved artillery, unfortunately I joined under the tyranny of Der Slickmeister.
Got called "Gun Bunny" enough that I did a graphic of a rabbit with a gun slung over it's shoulder.
Our Smoke was an affable enough guy, he liked the "Crazy Ideas" that advance party came up with....

[af_vet_rr]

Maybe you're all 45 years old but as I have aged and have an 11 year old,

Maybe we are A******s for laughing at it, but then again most of us taught our kids about the dangers of fire at an early age and not to do such idiotic things.

14 years old is not the age for somebody to be learning that fire can be dangerous.

[Darksheare]

Ah yes, the "Speak up. I'm artillery! What are you shouting for, I'm not deaf!" joke.
We always used that on our Smoke when he came over to our gun crew, just to rag on him a bit. (He was a cool NCO.)

I do miss it, though.
I swear, the propellant smoke is addictive.
I can recall the smell to memory at will, and it brings back rather strange but pleasant memories of actually doing SOMETHING rather than sitting back at 'home station' PMCS'ing vehicles non-stop.
One could ALWAYS tell the netural born artillery types the second the howitzer went off.
They were the ones that closed their eyes and inhaled when the smoke came back, or thumped their chests shouted and howled wildly. Then they'd fire a toilet paper round. (The 105mm round has a nice space behind the round that'll fit a slightly used roll of TP while firing charge 6 or 5. Not easily described except to say that the toilet paper's integritty doesn't stand up to the heat of the propellant, and the paper spray mess doesn't need to be cleaned up afterwards...)
The ones who weren't cut out for it tried to escape from the howitzer as quickly as they could.

[BSunday]

"The wage of stupidity is pain."

Sounds similar to one of my sayings - "The Stupid Shall Be Punished"

[the_devils_advocate_666]

I guess we now have an exception to the rule, "Ignorance is Bliss".

[verity]

I agree. He should not procreate.