00:01Pamela Krehmeyer
00:02Let's start in rural Iowa, October 26, 2019.
00:07The Krehmeyer family was getting ready for a party.
00:1056-year-old Pamela Krehmeyer was excited to find out the gender of her grandchild.
00:15The family, wanting to do something special for social media,
00:19decided to build their own explosive reveal device.
00:22Their plan was to pack a metal tube with gunpowder and colored powder
00:26so it would shoot a festive cloud of pink or blue into the air.
00:30But then they made a fatal mistake.
00:32To make the explosion more dramatic,
00:35they sealed the top of the metal tube with a piece of tape and a wooden board.
00:40Ehhh, they had just, completely by accident, built a perfect pipe bomb.
00:46When they lit the fuse, the device didn't just release a colorful puff of smoke.
00:50It detonated.
00:52The metal tube fragmented, sending high-velocity shrapnel flying in every direction.
00:58Pamela was standing about 45 feet away.
01:00A piece of metal, flying faster than a bullet, struck her in the head.
01:04She was killed instantly.
01:06The projectile had so much force that after passing through her skull,
01:11it continued for another 400 feet before landing in a field.
01:14The sheriff's office later released a statement explaining that the family had,
01:19inadvertently, created a lethal explosive device.
01:22A celebration of new life ended by killing the baby's grandmother with a homemade IED,
01:28all for a video.
01:30The irony is just brutal.
01:35Charles Morton
01:36Sometimes, the victim of a gender reveal isn't a guest or a family member.
01:41Sometimes, it's the person who has to clean up the mess.
01:45Meet Charles Morton, a 39-year-old veteran firefighter,
01:49a squad boss for the elite Big Bear Interagency Hot Shots in California.
01:53He was the guy you call when a fire gets out of control.
01:57On September 5th, 2020, a couple held a gender reveal party in El Dorado Ranch Park,
02:03near Yucaipa, California.
02:05It was peak wildfire season.
02:08The air was hot.
02:09The grass was dry as tinder.
02:11They decided to use a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device for their big announcement.
02:16The device malfunctioned and instantly ignited the dry grass around it.
02:21The fire spread with terrifying speed.
02:25This wasn't a small brush fire.
02:27Nope.
02:28This became the El Dorado fire,
02:30a monster that would go on to burn for over a month,
02:34scorching more than 22,000 acres,
02:37destroying homes, and forcing thousands to evacuate.
02:41Whew.
02:42And for 12 days, Charles Morton and his crew were on the front lines, battling the Inferno.
02:49On September 17th, while fighting the very fire that started with a puff of colored smoke,
02:54Charles was killed in the line of duty.
02:57The exact details of his death weren't released,
03:00but in those conditions, it's a horrific mix of extreme heat, smoke, and trauma.
03:07The couple who started the fire were later charged with involuntary manslaughter.
03:11Their little party to reveal their baby's gender didn't just cause millions in damages.
03:16It cost a hero his life.
03:19Rest in peace, Charles.
03:22The Mexican Air Force.
03:24You'd think that after one plane crashed and killed someone at a gender reveal,
03:28people might stop hiring planes for gender reveals, right?
03:32But you'd be wrong.
03:33Of course!
03:35In Mexico, it happened twice in just a couple of years, creating a mini-trend of fatal flyovers.
03:42First, September 2nd, 2023, in Sinaloa.
03:45A couple stands under a giant Oh Baby sign.
03:48A small plane, a Piper Pawnee, swoops in low, releasing a plume of pink smoke.
03:54It's a girl!
03:55The couple embraces.
03:57The guests cheer.
03:58But as the plane pulls up, its left wing suddenly folds into the fuselage.
04:03The aircraft spirals out of control and crashes just beyond the party.
04:08The 32-year-old pilot was pulled from the wreckage alive, but died in the hospital.
04:12The most chilling part of the video?
04:15The party-goers keep cheering, completely oblivious to the fact that the pilot who just delivered
04:20their news is dying a few hundred feet away.
04:23Now, rewind two years earlier, to March 29th, 2021, in Cancun.
04:29Another party, this time on a beach.
04:32Another small plane flies low over the water, trailing pink smoke.
04:37Niña! Niña!
04:38The crowd screams.
04:40It's a girl!
04:40The plane continues over the Nichupde Lagoon, and then just nosedives straight into the
04:47water.
04:48This time, both people on board, the pilot and co-pilot, were killed.
04:53One died on impact, the other after being rescued.
04:56Two different parties, two different planes, same pink smoke, and a total of three dead pilots.
05:03All so a couple could get a dramatic video for Instagram.
05:07The people hired to perform the stunt are sacrificed for the shot.
05:10While the families on the ground are left with a video that is equal parts celebration
05:14and snuff film.
05:17Evan Thomas Silva.
05:19Okay, so this next one wasn't technically a gender reveal, but a baby shower.
05:26Yet it's driven by the exact same fatally stupid impulse.
05:31The need for a bigger bang.
05:33On February 6th, 2021, in Gaines Township, Michigan, friends and family gathered to celebrate an upcoming
05:40birth.
05:41Among them was 26-year-old Evan Thomas Silva from Heartland, Michigan.
05:45He wasn't a stuntman, not a pyromaniac, just a friend at a party.
05:49The mood was light, people talked, laughed, unwrapped gifts.
05:54Then someone decided it was time to kick things up a notch.
05:58The homeowner had recently bought a small cannon at an auction.
06:02A so-called novelty or signal cannon, meant to make a loud bang, a flash, and some smoke.
06:09Not a weapon of war, just a party gimmick.
06:11It had been fired before without issues, which probably gave everyone a false sense of security.
06:17This time, they set it up in the backyard, loaded it with gunpowder, likely more than
06:21it was ever designed to handle, and got ready for the big boom.
06:26Only, the cannon didn't perform like a cute noisemaker.
06:29It didn't go boom and spit out a harmless cloud.
06:33Pressure built up inside, the metal couldn't take it, and the whole thing ruptured like a grenade.
06:38Metal fragments tore through the yard, hitting cars, peppering the garage, and slamming into the guests.
06:45Evan was standing about 10 to 15 feet away when a chunk of the cannon hit him.
06:50One piece of flying metal was all it took to turn a healthy 26-year-old into a critical trauma
06:56case.
06:57He was rushed to the hospital, but his injuries were too severe.
07:00Evan died not long after the blast.
07:04Investigators later concluded that the cannon was overloaded,
07:06never built for that amount of pressure.
07:09It didn't fire a projectile.
07:11It became the projectile, turning from antique-looking party prop into a DIY shrapnel bomb.
07:18No criminal charges were filed in the end.
07:20It was ruled a tragic accident, not a deliberate act.
07:24But that doesn't change the underlying mindset.
07:26This wasn't about safety or common sense or just having a nice afternoon.
07:31It was about a bigger bang, a more dramatic moment, a better video.
07:36And at a party meant to celebrate a new life, a guest lost his own because of one stupid, explosive
07:42stunt.
07:45Christopher Peckney.
07:46There's a special kind of tragedy when the person killed at a gender reveal is the father-to-be himself.
07:52He never even gets to meet the child whose gender he was so excited to announce.
07:58That's the story of 28-year-old Christopher Peckney from Liberty, New York.
08:02Hello!
08:03On February 21, 2021, Christopher and his brother Michael were in their garage working on a homemade gender reveal device.
08:12Just like the case in Iowa, it was some kind of pipe designed to explode and shoot out colored powder.
08:18Christopher was mechanically inclined, his family said.
08:21He was just tinkering, trying to build something cool for his first baby.
08:26While they were assembling it, the device suddenly and violently exploded.
08:31The blast was so powerful, it was heard around the neighborhood.
08:35When first responders arrived, they found a scene of carnage.
08:40Christopher Peckney was dead.
08:42His brother Michael was seriously injured.
08:45The New York State Police Bomb Disposal Unit had to be called in to investigate what exactly had gone wrong.
08:53It's the same sad story.
08:55A guy, excited about becoming a dad, decides to play with explosives.
09:01He underestimates the power, he makes a small mistake in the design,
09:05and the device he's building to celebrate his child becomes the bomb that kills him.
09:11He died in his own garage, killed by his own creation, leaving his partner to have their baby alone.
09:47We'll see you next time.
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