TikTok challenge leaves teen disfigured with nearly 80% of body burned: “He’s Unrecognizable”.
A TikTok challenge that went horribly wrong left a 16-year-old North Carolina boy severely disfigured, with burns covering nearly 80% of his body.
Mason Dark and his friends were creating a makeshift torch with a spray paint can and a lighter, which triggered an explosion that consumed the teens in flames.
“He’s unrecognizable. Unrecognizable,” his mother, Holli Dark, told WRAL. Mason hopped into a nearby river to soothe the burns, but emerged with charred skin.
Both moves ended up worsening his condition: The teenager suffered a T-shaped third-degree burn on his back from ripping off the flaming shift, and is at high risk of infection from the river water.
Mason was rushed to the UNC Burn Center with burns covering 76% of his body, his mother said. The way he looked when those kids saw him when he first came in, to what he looks like now, it’s 100 times different,” said Dark.
Mason has already undergone several surgeries to get skin grafts. Dark told the outlet it’s like seeding a lawn to see her son’s skin slowly heal.
The teenager, who is a very active football player and track runner, is expected to spend the next six months at the burn center. Mason was seen in a recent photo asleep on the hospital bed while wrapped in white bandages. The extent of his injuries were unknown until Thursday when he underwent ‘the first of many surgeries.’
‘[We] come to find out now from the surgery, that he’s got the third-degree burns… it’s like a T in his back and it was from him taking off his shirt, and then it got stuck or something,’ Holli said.
‘We did not find out until yesterday that it was actually 76 percent of his body.’
Holli described her son as outgoing and is in disbelief she doesn’t recognize him.
‘The way he looked when those kids saw him when he first came in, to what he looks like now, it’s 100 times different,’ she told the news outlet.
Mason is expected to recover in the burn center for about six months as the extent of his condition remains fully unknown. According to Holli, her son’s condition is at risk for progressing. Several videos posted on the social media platform showed the challenge in action.
The most common way to perform the quest is by applying spray paint to a paper and lighting a flame on top. The flame stays in tact for as long as the lighter is on.
One daring TikToker decided to take the challenge a step further and took a can of spray paint to a fire pit – creating a massive blaze.
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