Before Shooting Boyfriend for YouTube Glory, She Tweeted

Monalisa Perez tweeted it would be 'one of the most dangerous videos ever'
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 29, 2017 12:01 PM CDT
Woman Foreshadowed Deadly YouTube Stunt on Twitter
Monalisa Perez   (Northwest Regional Corrections Center via AP)

A Minnesota woman charged with fatally shooting her boyfriend in a failed YouTube video stunt foreshadowed the event when she tweeted that it would be "one of the most dangerous videos ever." Monalisa Perez, of Halstad, was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Pedro Ruiz III. Perez, who is pregnant and faces up to 10 years in prison, was released on $7,000 bail. According to the criminal complaint, the 19-year-old Perez told investigators that Ruiz wanted to make a video of her shooting a bullet into a book he was holding against his chest. Hours before the Tuesday night shooting, Perez tweeted: "Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. HIS idea not MINE."

The complaint says Ruiz set up one camera on the back of a vehicle and another camera on a ladder nearby. Perez says she fired from about a foot away with what authorities say was a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol, which the AP reports is described by retailer Cabela's in an online ad as "one of the world's most powerful semiautomatic handguns." Perez died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. Many of the videos on Perez's YouTube channel are of her and Ruiz playing pranks and performing stunts, with the New York Times noting that most were pretty mild; it cites one video were Ruiz eats a doughnut Perez covered not in powdered sugar, but baby powder. The most recent video was posted the morning before the shooting. "Imagine when we have 300,000 subscribers," Perez says during the video. (More stunts stories.)

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