Virginia Teen Killed During ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ Prank

One Virginia teenager is useless, one other is injured, and a person is dealing with a cost of second-degree homicide, all as a result of a TikTok prank went terribly unsuitable.

In accordance with Regulation & Crime, 27-year-old Tyler Chase Butler has been charged with second-degree homicide, malicious wounding and two counts of use of a firearm within the fee of a felony after he allegedly shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Bosworth Jr., who, together with two different teenagers, had been knocking on strangers’ doorways round 3 a.m. whereas recording movies of themselves performing “ding dong ditches” for TikTok. For these unfamiliar with “ding dong ditch,” it’s typically a sport youngsters have been enjoying for generations, the place they ring the doorbells or knock on the doorways of random residents, then run away as mentioned residents come to reply the door.

It was a sport that proved lethal as soon as the teenagers arrived at Butler’s house.

From Regulation & Crime:

In accordance with the Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Workplace, deputies obtained a name round 3 a.m. Saturday a few house housebreaking in progress the place the resident fired pictures. After they arrived, cops discovered two teenagers affected by gunshot wounds. One, later recognized as 18-year-old Michael Bosworth, Jr., was rushed to the hospital the place he died.

The opposite teen suffered minor accidents and in addition was taken to the hospital. A warrant request filed in Spotsylvania Circuit Court docket and obtained by Regulation&Crime says detectives spoke with the teenager who mentioned he was out with Bosworth and one other buddy pulling a well known prank through which individuals ring a house’s doorbell earlier than operating away.

“The juvenile suggested it’s one thing that persons are doing to placed on TikTok,” a detective wrote.

Per the warrant, the teenagers weren’t conversant in the neighborhood and had accomplished the prank on a few different doorways earlier than they got here to the fateful deal with on McKenzie Lane in Fredericksburg, some 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. The teenager informed cops they have been operating from the house once they have been shot at, the warrant mentioned.

Detectives additionally spoke with the third teen, who was unhurt and corroborated the story that they’d been operating away once they have been shot at. The teenager additionally reportedly offered the authorities with mobile phone video footage of the trio pranking different homes. The arrest warrant for Butler included a request to a decide to look “any movies, pictures or textual content communication reference to processing, making or having ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ movies.”

Now, for the elephant within the room: Butler is a Black man, and Bosworth was a white teen.

Predictably, these racial identities of the alleged shooter and the alleged sufferer, alone, has been sufficient to get people on social media buzzing in regards to the rights and wrongs of the unlucky taking pictures, with some calling Butler an outright assassin, and lots of others declaring he had the suitable to guard his house, and that he would have by no means been arrested if he have been a white man and Bosworth was a Black teen.