Pranks Gone Wrong That Accidentally Killed People

Halloween tricks might be an ordinary part of the holiday's festivities, but for one teen in 2014, the joke went horribly awry when she lost her life as a result of her stunt. Adrian Broadway, a 15-year-old girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, was with her friends toilet-papering, egging, and throwing mayonnaise on a car, in retaliation for a prank someone else had pulled on her group. Unfortunately, a 48-year-old man came out of the house and opened fire on them in their car, killing her and injuring one of her friends. The shooter, Willie Noble, was later sentenced to 30 years in prison for Broadway's death.

There've been a number of hilarious hoaxes orchestrated in the name of Sasquatch, but one man's decision to suit up as Bigfoot to summon a few scares cost him his life. 44-year-old Randy Lee Tenley impersonated the elusive beast in 2012 by donning a military-style ghillie suit on the side of Kalispell, Montana's Highway 93, to spook travelers on the road into thinking they'd witnessed the sought-after animal. Instead, he was run over by two teen drivers and died as a result of his injuries.

"Ding, dong, ditch" was a common source of young amusement at one time, but when 16-year-old Mark Drewes engaged in the old door-to-door pastime in Boca Raton, Florida in 2003, it proved to be a deadly game. Drewes was shot to death while walking away from the home of Jay Levin, who claimed he thought Drewes was an armed intruder. Levin pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 52 weekends in jail, and ordered to pay $750,000 in restitution to the boy's parents.

In another underwear-related fatality, a group of teens thought it'd be funny to throw their soaked drawers onto a nearby cop car after a late night swim. However, once the officer tracked down the kids later that night, his retaliation involved the use of deadly force. Trooper B.D. Gillespie of West Virginia suited up to exact revenge upon the jokesters and, after engaging in a skirmish with the group, assaulted 18-year-old Timothy Hill with pepper spray, his baton and, ultimately, two rounds from his gun. The boy died as a result of his wounds.

In 2012, the first pregnancy of Duchess Kate Middleton was an international spectacle, especially when she was admitted to King Edward VII Hospital in London for complications associated with severe morning sickness. Australian radio show hosts Mel Greig and Mike Christian decided call the hospital while impersonating the Queen of England, in order to get details on Middleton's condition. The answering nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, believed them and patched them through to her nurse. A few days later, upon finding out she'd been duped, Saldanha was so humiliated that she took her own life, by hanging herself in the nurse's quarters at work.

November 25, 2010 — Thanksgiving Day — was the worst day of the Charbonneau family's lives. On that day, Jeffrey Charbonneau and his best friend, Nicholas Bell, were hanging out. Eventually, Charbonneau passed out. Because there's no humor like instant pain, Bell decided to grab what he thought was an unloaded BB gun and to shoot at or around his sleeping friend.

It wasn't at all funny because this supposedly unloaded BB gun was actually a fully loaded shotgun. Bell's planned joke became an execution; he shot his best friend point-blank in the chest, killing him instantly. He apparently didn't mean to, and in 2012 owned up to everything, pleading no-contest to manslaughter, simple assault with a weapon, and reckless endangerment. According to the Manchester Journal of Vermont, a judge sentenced Bell to just one year in prison for the latter two charges, with seven more suspended for the manslaughter. Charbonneau's family wanted more prison time, but the judge decided that this was simply a tragic accident, that Bell didn't mean to even point it at his friend (though what else he could have been planning to pretend-shoot at is a mystery), and that he was truly repentant and was in no danger to be violent in the future.

In July 1982, 15-year-old Peter Wade and his friends were drinking and playing near some train tracks in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. They got the idea to throw a switch that would mess with the tracks, not to mention an oncoming train's planned route. It sure worked. The train didn't make the turn it was supposed to, and instead derailed, slamming into the wall of a factory. While the passengers all survived, the conductor, John Duffy, was killed immediately. The kids were arrested, tried as adults for manslaughter, and served some time.

Wade put in five years in a youth correctional facility, then went on to become a prominent Wall Street stock analyst pulling in millions. He also became a filmmaker, putting out 2005's Tracks, based on the story of what he and his friends did back in 1982. He claims he made the film to help, as ABC News put it, "reach out to troubled teenagers," though the Duffy family claims he should've found a less "self-serving" way to help than make a feature film he could profit from. Plus, as they put it, all that does is send a message to kids that if you senselessly murder somebody, you too can grow up to make millions of dollars and your own movie.

Some tragic pranks start out harmless, but this one was cruel from the get-go. According to the mother of 11-year-old Tysen Benz, he received messages over social media on March 14, 2017, saying his 13-year-old girlfriend had just killed herself. His mom thinks it was the girlfriend herself sending those messages while pretending to be someone else. Distraught, Benz replied to mutual friends that he was going to do the same. Apparently, nobody ever told Benz it was a prank and that his girlfriend was still alive. In addition, reportedly none of these friends told an adult that Benz was threatening suicide. Instead, they continued to tell Benz his girlfriend was dead, and either assumed Benz wouldn't actually kill himself or simply didn't care.

Sadly, Benz followed through with his threat. Within an hour of getting those messages, Benz had hung himself in his room. His mom found him later on and rushed him to a hospital, but it was too late. He never regained consciousness, and three weeks later he died. The girl in question has been charged with malicious use of telecom services, as well as committing a crime via a computer, but only time will tell if the realization of what she did will change her for the better.