Former Rare Staff
Warning: you may find the images in the video below disturbing.
Videos by Rare
In a disturbing incident in the Bronx, N.Y. early Monday an 11-year-old girl suffered serious burns to her face, neck and torso when her friends, playing a “game” called the “hot water challenge,” threw scalding water on her as she slept.
RELATED:Â A couple allegedly killed their deaf teenage son and then burned down their house to cover it up
NY1 News reported that 11-year-old Jamoneisha Merritt was taken to a burn unit after the friends she was with for a sleepover threw boiling water on her.
The images from the hospital are graphic.
Graphic Image. #Exclusive #NYC Girl Jamoneisha Merritt latest victim of #hotwaterchallenge. Kids tossing boiling water on others. More @NY1 pic.twitter.com/fiWlWxeNTC
— Dean Meminger (@DeanMeminger) August 9, 2017
The girl’s mother, Ebony Merritt, told NY1 News that her daughter “thought they was her friends,” but that she was also told the other girls “didn’t like her” and have “been bullying her.”
Even worse, Merritt said, the girl responsible “admitted it” and said “I don’t like her. I wanted to do it.”
“She’s very sad. She’s emotionally messed up. She don’t understand why they did that to her. She thought they was her friends,” the mother said. “I was told that they didn’t like her. And they just been bullying her. They’ve been on Snapchat. It’s been going on several times. The girl admitted it. ‘I don’t like her. I wanted to do it.'”
That girl has been charged with felony assault.
As the New York Post noted in its report, 8-year-old girl Ki’ari Pope of Florida died last month after being dared to drink boiling water through a straw by her cousin. Those children, we now know, were influenced by YouTube videos of people taking the “hot water challenge.”
So, for any of you parents out there, in light of the vicious assault on Jamoneisha Merritt in New York also in the the “hot water challenge,” it’s safe to say the dangerous game has spread.
Keep your eyes open.
