Teen Burns 85% Of His Body Performing "Jackass" Stunt

[matcom]

<snip>

A 15-year-old Mission boy suffered burns to 85 per cent of his body after dousing his pant legs with gasoline and lighting himself on fire as a stunt.

With four friends watching at about 7 p.m. Friday, the boy lit himself on fire at the playground on Christine Morrison elementary school in Mission.

"It's something they saw on television or movies," said Mission RCMP Constable Tammy Sandquist. "Basically it was kids getting together and one kid in particular decided to do this stunt by setting himself on fire. There was no intention to commit suicide. It was an accident."

The friends tried to get him to roll on the ground, while another boy ran to the nearby school, which had closed for the weekend.

Pounding on the door, one of the boys got a school janitor to come out. When she saw what was happening, she grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. An ambulance took the boy to MSA Hospital in Abbotsford, from where he was transferred to Vancouver General Hospital by air ambulance.

The victim, a student at Ecole Mission secondary school, is in serious but stable condition.

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=c0db7834-5914-443f-b411-8358ffefb736

[truthspeaker]

1. Maybe this makes me an insensitive jerk, but I have to say it.

Dumbass!

[Ganja Ninja]

5. I find it hard to be sensitive with such a stupid stunt.

He really was a dumbass.

[afraid_of_the_dark]

24. I think he's a candidate for a Darwin Award...

I just don't understand how something like that could ever sound like a good idea.

[THUNDER HANDS]

2. if wonder if he was a democrat?

Would that make him a flaming liberal?

[Superfly]

3. Darwin Award Candidate

"The victim"? Yeah, right. How about "The dumbshit"

[Loonman]

4. Nice going.....

.......dumbass!

[daveskilt]

6. Its called natural selection

and I'm all for it. He was 15 - old enough to know better.

[Frodo]

7. I know it's a TV show, but I still see no reason for the "quotes".

It WAS a jackass stunt.

[Doctor_J]

8. Darwin was right

This is 21st century natural selection - people driving around train gates, emulating Jackass, etc.

[curse10]

9. Jesus. He was 15! He should have known better!

What the hell were they thinking? Maybe that's the problem, they weren't thinking.

[Dark]

10. Oh god no. . .

If this what the future voters are going to be like. . . God have mercy on us all. No wait! That's how we wound up with Bush!

[Luvpurp]

11. Yes he was stupid

but we have all done stupid things in our lives. Most of us don't have to pay the piper the way this boy has for our own stupidity. Maybe I am just a hopelees bleeding heart, but I have nothing but sympathy for this boy and his family.

[chimpy the poopthrower]

19. ditto, Luvpurp

Who knows why kids do things like this when they seemingly should know better? The teenage mind just works differently, I think. I feel so sad for this boy and especially his family.

:(

[GOPisEvil]

12. Quiet please! Genius at work!!!

:eyes:

[packerssuck]

13. I hope he taped it!

[Dogmudgeon]

14. Feel the love!

Let me check to see that I have this straight:

A person faces a personal tragedy? Check.

The victim is somehow at fault in the tragedy? Check.

Many of the people responding to the news item become indignant at the victim. Check.

Darwin, Natural Selection, "Evolution In Action" are invoked? Check.

People posting on the item vent their rage at liberalism and praise George W. Bush? Nope.

Looks like I'm still in liberal-land after all.

--bkl
Evolving bigger brains but smaller hearts?

[pagerbear]

15. OK, now we're all ashamed of ourselves

[Shoedogg]

16. I'm not!

I mean, seriously, the kid LIT HIMSELF ON FIRE!

I'll call an idiot an idiot.

[Richardo]

17. Not me - I hope the 85% involved his reproductive organs...

We don't need him fathering any more morans, thank you. We have plenty.

Idiot.

[ProfessorGAC]

23. Excuse Me, BKL!

You Said: "The victim is somehow at fault in the tragedy? Check."

The victim IS AT FAULT FOR THIS TRAGEDY! He put gasoline on his pants and set himself on fire!

I know a guy who, when he was 15, had a gasoline accident near his garage, he was smoking a cigarette, went into the garage and flicked an ash. His dad had been degreasing a small engine, and the degreaser was on the floor. It ignited and led to the gas can, a few feet away. Boom! 3rd degree burns on the upper 1/3rd of his body.

THAT is an accident in which nobody with a heart would blame the victim. This kid SET HIMSELF ON FIRE! Which part of that did you miss? It seems your pontificating is misplaced.
The Professor

[Dogmudgeon]

25. Whose outrage?

Nearly every tragedy has some element of Personal Responsibility™ involved. According to many modern philosophers, especially those who occupy various Chairs of Salon Ethics, Personal Responsibility™ is infinite.

Yes, I'm mocking the pseudo-philosophy of Personal Responsibility™. Its proponants like to cite Epictetus, but it's really just Ayn Rand and Ron Hubbard, as refined by right-wing politicians.

Sure, the kid was stupid. And the dozen-plus people here venting their moral outrage helps this, how?

Half a million people die each year from the results of smoking; a quarter of a million from drinking; accidents of all types take hundreds of thousands of lives. Maybe if the evangelists for "Evolution in Action" went around like Fred Phelps and mocked the victims in the hospital or at funerals, the unscathed among us would find it to be a bracing moral tonic.

Or, we might think that those evangelists were smug sociopaths.

I missed nothing in the original posting. Nobody deserves public humiliation for a "Darwinian" punishment, no matter how dumb the cause was. This is just another case of an on-line Parable of Natural Selection, justified by the appalling stupidity of the victim and sanctified by invoking Social Darwinism.

By the way, I'm not calling for anyone to feel ashamed. God (and Memetics) forbid! That's an option you may or may not want to indulge in. But a harsh and unforgiving -- yet philosophically well-articulated -- world-view will "cull the herd" just as effectively as foolish behavior.

The real stupidity is that anyone thinks that they are not going to be part of that cull.

--bkl

[Norbert]

18. The kid has to live with what he did

He knows what he did was stupid and he will be tormented enough throughout life now.

Too bad.

[SmileyBoy]

20. It's not Johnny Knoxville's fault that these kids are stupid.

I watched the show through the years, and saw the movie. Those warnings were plastered all over it. I'm sorry to sound insensitive, but if some kid fails to make the connection to all those freakin warnings and then does something crazy to himself anyway, then I think he then absolves Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, Brandon DiCamillo, Chris Pontius and all the other Jackass members of any responsibility, IMO.

[CanuckAmok]

21. Alright!! A local guy made the papers! n/t

[WilliamPitt]

22. Darwin

[Heyo]

26. Who is to blame...

when a 15 year old boy doesn't know not to pour gasoline on himself and light himself on fire..

I feel bad for the consequences he's suffering, but damn... with that little common sense, he was bound to destroy himself eventually..

I'm just sorry it had to be by fire... very painful..

I pray for him despite his foolishness..

Hope for the best.. it really is a tough way to learn a lesson.

Heyo

[Blue-Jay]

27. 5% more, and he'd have gotten an 'A' in Dumbassery 101.

These are sad times we live in.