Did a teen die after participating in the ice bucket challenge?
Various rumours have been spreading across social media that claims a teen was killed during the popular ice bucket challenge meme where participants have to pour ice cold water over themselves when nominated to do so by friends (as well as donate to charity.)
Different rumours have spread telling different stories. Perhaps the more popular of these is a video that shows a blue tub of water crashing down onto the heads of two girls along with the caption Mississippi Girl Dies After Breaking Her Neck From Ice Bucket Challenge. The image below shows a still from this video.
On further investigation some stories across the web identify the girl as Nancy Oley, a 17 year old native of Mississippi state. However these stories appear inaccurate and the girl appears to have actually been called Therese Todd who uploaded the video herself (thus providing reasonable evidence that she didn’t die) and claimed that despite the accident both the smaller girl and herself were not seriously injured by the falling tub of ice water.
Another version – this time in the format of a news article most popularly spread via “satire” news websites looking to cash in on the popular meme by spreading false information under the guise of satirical entertainment – claims that a teen named Sergio Cardozo, another Mississippi resident, was killed after a tub was dropped onto his head. This story is accompanied by another video that shows a male with an American Football helmet sitting on a sofa.
Expert from website article –
However whilst we cannot determine the source of that video we do know that it was popular fake news website Huzlers that published it, acknowledging that the story was not real. Furthermore no legitimate news reports reporting the death or serious injury of a Sergio Cardozo appear after an Internet search.
Huzlers were also responsible for helping another rumour, this time claiming the victim to be a Latasha Brown who apparently died of hypothermia 30 seconds after having a bucket of ice water thrown over her. However this is just another fake article telling a story that never happened and the photo accompanying the article shows a woman named Sandra Robinson, not Latasha Brown
The closest result of someone dying as a result of the popular Internet meme is when Scottish teenager Cameron Lancaster drowned when he dove off a cliff in a quarry this week – which many are attributing as a dangerous twist to the existing challenge.
Another incident occurred in New Zealand in July 2014 where Willis Tepania participated in the “ice challenge” which, in this case, combined the existing challenge with a heavy drinking game. According to news reports, Tepania also drank excessive amounts of Jim Beam bourbon and later died after having a heart attack.
Whilst various other similar rumours exist to the ones we discuss above, it appears that (at the time of writing) no one has died as a result of having tubs of water falling onto their heads whilst doing the ice bucket challenge, and nor has anyone broken their necks or frozen to death as a result of the challenge either.