A dangerous TikTok challenge left a North Carolina teenager severely disfigured, with burns covering around 80% of his body.
Mason Dark, 16, was creating a makeshift torch from a can of spray paint, as well as a lighter, which set off an explosion that left the teenager on fire.
Dark’s tragic outcome occurred after he and his friends participated in a TikTok challenge that had users use flammable sprays to create a ‘mini flamethrower’, but instead of the flame rising, the canister exploded.
“Everybody heard a big boom. And then Mason ran out and started taking off his shirt,” Holi Dark, the victim’s mother, told WRAL.
After the explosion, Mason jumped into a nearby river to try to soothe the burns, but his skin ended up charred.
The attempt to neutralize the burns with river water ended up being more unfavorable for the adolescent, since in addition to suffering a third-degree burn in the shape of a T on his back, he is at high risk of infection from contact with his body with river water. river.
Dark was taken to the UNC Burn Center, presenting burns that covered 76% of his body, his mother said.
“The way he looked when those kids saw him when he first walked in, to how he looks now, is 100 times different,” Holi Dark said.
The teenager, who plays football and actively runs track, is expected to spend the next six months in a burn center, the New York Post reported.
So far, Mason has undergone several surgeries to get skin grafts, but his mother said her son’s evolution was like planting a lawn and watching it slowly grow.