Fifteen-year-old Nickolas was having a sleepover with six of his friends.
Then suddenly, he woke up in the middle of the night feeling like his neck was on fire.
“It was the worst pain of my life,” Nickolas told KTHV News.
But what had actually happened while Nickolas Conrad, a 15-year-old student from Arkansas, was sleeping?
“I felt this really bad burning on my neck and when I woke up and I started screaming and crying,” Nickolas told KTHV.
Well, it turned out it wasn’t an accident.
Nickolas was the victim of an “internet challenge” that has become popular among young people recently. It’s called the “Hot Water Challenge” and there are a couple different variations.
In the version that Nickolas’ so-called friends played, they waited for him to fall asleep and poured boiling water on him.
The “game” caused first and second degree burns on Nickolas’ neck. He was rushed to hospital for care.
Nickolas’ friends said they didn’t realize the water was hot, but Nickolas doesn’t believe it.
“They’re not my friends anymore and they’re not going to be,” Nickolas said about the boys who tried the “challenge” on him.
Of course, the boy’s mother, Mickey, is disgusted with what happened to her son.
“I thought he had been in an accident and that it had been an accident. But when I found out it was deliberate, it’s so concerning,” Mickey said to KTHV, “Don’t ever say, ‘My child won’t do that,’ and educate them.”
According to KTHV, no charges have been brought and the adults who were at home at the time were asleep during the incident. They had no idea what was going on.
The “Hot Water Challenge” is being taken seriously in schools across the United States. In August 2017, an 11-year-old girl named Jamoneisha Merritt got her face burned when her friends threw boiling water at her, and an eight-year-old girl in Florida died as a result of trying to drink boiling water on a dare.
Watch a news report about Nickolas’ case here:
This has to stop immediately. Please share this article so that more parents talk to their children and make sure they know how dangerous this is.
