The Crazy Pedro Stunt: Recordings, Plea, and Sentence

On June 26, 2017, 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz III died in Halstad, Minnesota, after convincing his pregnant 19-year-old girlfriend, Monalisa Perez, to shoot him in the chest with a .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun while he held a hardcover encyclopedia as a shield. The Pedro Ruiz YouTube stunt was meant to launch a new channel built around extreme content. Perez pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 180 days in jail and ten years of probation.¹

What Ruiz Was Trying to Do

Ruiz was preparing to launch a YouTube channel called “Dammit Boy,” pitched as a home for extreme stunts in the style of Jackass and Nitro Circus. In a teaser trailer, he told viewers, “My thing is crazy. I’m borderline crazy. My whole thing is I love the adrenaline, the pumping, the near-death experiences every time I do something.”² He and Perez already ran a small family channel called “LaMonaLisa” with 18 videos and roughly 8,460 total views, mostly lighthearted pranks.³

The fatal stunt was planned as the dramatic debut. Ruiz wanted to prove that an encyclopedia roughly 1.5 inches thick could stop a bullet from a gold Desert Eagle .50 caliber pistol, one of the most powerful semiautomatic handguns commercially available.⁴ He had tested the premise on a different book earlier and showed Perez that the bullet had left an entrance hole but no exit hole.⁵ On the day of the shooting, Ruiz held the encyclopedia against his chest while Perez stood about one foot away with the loaded handgun. Two GoPros, mounted on a car and a ladder, were set to record. Nearly 30 onlookers watched, including the couple’s three-year-old daughter, Aaliyah.⁶ The bullet passed through the book and struck Ruiz in the chest. He was pronounced dead at the scene.⁷ Perez was pregnant with the couple’s second child at the time.⁸

What the Recordings Showed

Prosecutors in Norman County later released videos and transcripts from the setup. Perez can be heard repeatedly expressing fear. “Babe, if I kill you what’s gonna happen to my life,” she said at one point. “I can’t do it, babe.” And: “Babe, I’m not doing this. I can’t.” The transcripts note she was crying.⁹

Ruiz pressed her to go through with it. “As long as you hit the book you’ll be fine. Come on. The batteries gonna die on it. Come closer,” he told her. He also acknowledged the risk aloud: “If I’m going to die, I’m pretty much ready to go to heaven right now. He probably won’t accept me into the pearly gates because of how stupid this is, but I have confidence that my girlfriend will hit the book and not me.”² After the shot, Perez can be heard saying, “Stop. Babe stop.”¹⁰ She then called 911 and told the dispatcher, “We were doing a YouTube video and he wanted to see if I could shoot his gun in a book and it went and shot him and it’s all on recording.”

Norman County Attorney James Brue declined to release the actual video of the shooting, calling it “clearly offensive to common sensibilities.”¹¹ The footage never appeared on YouTube; it was taken by law enforcement as evidence.¹²

The Charge and the Plea

Perez was charged with second-degree manslaughter under Minnesota Statute 609.205, which covers deaths caused by culpable negligence, defined as creating an unreasonable risk and consciously taking chances of causing death or great bodily harm. The maximum penalty is ten years in prison and a $20,000 fine.¹³ The case was filed in Norman County District Court as 54-CR-17-185.¹⁴

In December 2017, Perez pleaded guilty under an agreement calling for 180 days in jail and 10 years of supervised probation.¹⁵ Brue defended the deal by arguing that the stunt was “dreamed up, planned and executed by Pedro Ruiz” and that Perez had “wrongfully and tragically relied on his assurances that the stunt was safe.” In a court filing, he pointed to the Minnesota sentencing guidelines’ allowance for departures when “the offender played a minor or passive role in the crime.”¹⁶

The Sentence

Judge Jeffrey Remick accepted the plea agreement and sentenced Perez on March 14, 2018, in Ada, Minnesota. The sentence was well below the statutory maximum.¹ Its terms:

180 days in jail. The first 90 days were to be served in alternating 10-day increments in and out of custody. The remaining 90 days were eligible for electronic home monitoring. Perez was required to serve 30 days each year by June 26, the anniversary of the shooting, through 2020, and was permitted to serve the time at a jail in South Dakota, where she had moved.¹⁷
Ten years of supervised probation, with conditions including remaining chemical-free and providing DNA samples.
A lifetime prohibition on owning handguns, ammunition, or explosives.
A court order barring Perez from receiving any financial gain from telling the story of the incident.¹⁸
Restitution for Pedro Ruiz III’s funeral costs.¹⁶

Judge Remick also denied media requests to record in the courtroom, saying the surviving family members “need to heal” and that recordings would “perpetuate” the “infamy” created by Ruiz’s pursuit of fame, which “cost him his life.”¹⁹

How the Ruiz Family Reacted

Members of Ruiz’s family attended the sentencing in T-shirts printed with his face on the front and an image of the gold Desert Eagle on the back. His aunt Paulita Ruiz addressed Perez directly: “You took him away from us, Mona,” while adding, “We don’t hate you.” She said Perez had never apologized to the family and called the sentence “so short,” rejecting the idea that the stunt was solely Pedro’s responsibility.¹⁹ Another aunt, Claudia Ruiz, voiced doubt about what had happened at all: “Was it suicide? Was it planned? We don’t know. We’ll never know. She could have put the gun down and she didn’t.”²⁰

A year after the shooting, the family held a memorial at Lindenwood Park, releasing balloons and wearing shirts reading “YouTube fame… not worth it.” By then the couple’s two children were living with Perez in South Dakota, and the Ruiz family said they had not seen them “for a while.”²⁰

Where Monalisa Perez Is Now

Perez relocated to Tea, South Dakota, with a new partner, Tyler Blake Weathersby. The two became engaged and launched a streetwear clothing brand called “Wake,” focused on themes of self-love and self-awareness, operating by 2020 out of a warehouse on Sunset Boulevard.²¹ A 2021 profile described Perez as having “found peace” in her new life.²²

The old “LaMonaLisa” YouTube channel drew a surge of attention after the shooting, growing to nearly 22,000 subscribers within three months. In July 2018, Perez removed all of the channel’s previous videos and began uploading new content.³

1
The Guardian. Woman Jailed for Killing Boyfriend in YouTube Stunt That Went Wrong
2
Fox 9. Videos, Transcripts Reveal Moments Before Fatal YouTube Stunt Shooting
3
Esquire. How Desperation for YouTube Fame Ended in Tragedy
4
Concord Monitor. Minnesota Shooting YouTube Book
5
WOWT. Woman Fatally Shoots Boyfriend in Online Stunt
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BBC News. Woman Jailed for Killing Boyfriend in YouTube Stunt
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ABC 13. Woman Blames YouTube Stunt for Boyfriend’s Death
8
Fredrikson Funeral Home. Obituary of Pedro Ruiz III
9
West Central Tribune. Transcript Released in Fatal YouTube Stunt in Northwestern Minn
10
Detroit Lakes Online. Transcript of Deadly YouTube Stunt in Halstad Released
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InForum. Videos, Transcript Reveal Moments Before Deadly YouTube Stunt in Norman County
12
BBC News. YouTube Shooting: When Online Stunts Go Wrong
13
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Statute 609.205 – Manslaughter in the Second Degree
14
Scribd. 54-CR-17-185 Complaint Order for Detention
15
Twin Cities Pioneer Press. Minnesota Woman Pleads Guilty to Fatally Shooting Boyfriend in YouTube Stunt Gone Wrong
16
WRAL. Victim’s Family Speaks Out at Sentencing for YouTube Homicide
17
MPR News. Woman to Serve 6 Months After Killing Boyfriend in YouTube Stunt
18
UPI. Woman Who Shot Boyfriend in YouTube Stunt Sentenced to 180 Days
19
WRAL. Victim’s Family Speaks Out at Sentencing for YouTube Homicide
20
InForum. Family Members Remember Pedro Ruiz III One Year After Deadly YouTube Stunt
21
Sioux Falls Business. Streetwear Clothing Company Grows Into Commercial Space
22
InForum. How Monalisa Perez Found Peace After a YouTube Stunt Turned Deadly in Minnesota