Thanks To A Web Chat Challenge A Teen Shoots Himself In The Head

I realize that a teenager’s ego can be a little on the fragile side but the idea that an 18-year-old Philadelphia would end up accidentally shooting himself in the head because someone he was having a web chat with challenged the young man’s ‘manhood’ is just sad.

According to Capt. John Gallagher from the Philadelphia Police Department the young man didn’t think that the gun was loaded when he put it to his head and pulled the trigger.

Around 1:15 a.m., the teen was video chatting — police believe it was either over Skype or another video chat service called ooVoo — with an as-of-yet unidentified person while his brothers were asleep in the room of their Kensington house.

Sometime during the video chat, things went horribly wrong.

“His manhood or his ego was challenged and he said something along the lines of ‘I’ll show you,’ ” Gallagher said. “He thought he was clowning around, trying to shock the other party on the Internet site.”

That’s when the teen picked up his older brother’s gun and, believing it was unloaded, put it to his head and pulled the trigger, police said.

via Philly.com

It is reported that the young man’s two brother’s, one of whom is 13-years-old, were present in the same room at the time of the shooting but were asleep.

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Tags: guns, russian roulette, Shooting

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Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).