TikTok Prank Death Spotlights Other Dangerous Social Media Challenges

The news of an 11-year-old Houston boy who was gunned down while fleeing a neighbor’s residence in a game of “ding dong ditch” hit home for former Harris County Chief Prosecutor Murray Newman.

Newman, 52, now a criminal defense attorney, has an 11-year-old son.

“If I found out that my 11-year-old was doing ding dong ditches, the first thing I’d do is show him this news story and tell him you don’t know who’s on the other side of that door any more than [the homeowner] does,” Newman said. “You don’t know how he’s going to react. I’m not here to criticize anybody’s parenting or anything like that, but I can tell you that if I found out my kid was doing that, certainly at night, I’d put the fear of God in him.”

The shooting death of Julian Guzman rocked Houston when people learned that the youth was shot in the back after he rang the doorbell of a neighbor and dashed away down Racine Street around 11 p.m. on August 30. Prosecutors allege that U.S. Army veteran Gonzalo Leon Jr., who is being held on a $1 million bond at the Harris County Jail, was the shooter.

Witnesses say that Julian, who was playing pranks with his cousin on a Saturday night, was filming the doorbell capers on his cell phone, possibly as part of a TikTok challenge.

Ding dong ditch is experiencing a renaissance, Newman said, noting that he didn’t know kids still did that. The attorney said he remembers his peers playing the prank when they were children, but they probably just rang the doorbells of people they knew — and they didn’t have cell phones in the 1980s, so they weren’t uploading videos for clout or followers.

When the youth of Newman’s generation was playing pranks, the greatest potential consequence was a stern admonishment from a parent, he said. Certainly, no one thought they would get shot.

“There are people who overreact to things like this,” Newman said. “All you have to do is look at your local neighborhood page on Facebook or the Nextdoor app and you’ll see someone talking about how someone rang their doorbell and they were scared. People should be aware that when they go to a home where they’re not expected and they ring the doorbell and run off, the homeowners don’t necessarily know what’s going on.”

“That doesn’t give the homeowner license to just start indiscriminately shooting,” he added. “The danger in playing ding dong ditch is you are going to get a reaction from somebody who overreacts to what the moment calls for.”

Accidental deaths from TikTok games have been reported over the past several years. The Benadryl challenge, popular in 2020, encouraged kids to take more than a dozen allergy pills to get high and have hallucinations. At least three teens overdosed and died.

Other dangerous TikTok challenges include “chroming,” which can cause kids to go into cardiac arrest after inhaling aerosol products like deodorant, and pranks that encourage reckless driving and slapping teachers at school.

The parents of four British teens sued TikTok earlier this year, alleging their children died while participating in a popular choking game called the “Blackout Challenge” that they saw on the social media platform. TikTok claimed that hashtags and searches for the blackout challenge have been blocked since 2020; the teens died in 2022.

A search for “blackout challenge” conducted on the social media platform this week brought up a message that states, “Some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing, or even fabricated. Learn how to recognize harmful challenges so you can protect your health and well-being.”

Searches for “ding dong ditch,” however, produce numerous videos about Julian’s murder and other, less serious, videos of kids being caught while playing the game. One clip posted by Derek Lipp shows a child telling a homeowner that he was “super sorry,” but his dad told him the prank was “a core childhood memory and he wants to be a part of it.” The dad can be observed in the background advising the child to run.

The story of Julian Guzman’s death — and several other ding dong ditch tragedies in Texas and across the country — has no doubt raised awareness about the hazards of copying pranks viewed on the internet. It’s also brought to the forefront a discussion on gun violence and whether there’s any potential defense for a man who shot a child in the back.

“The death of 11-year-old Julian Guzman in Houston is a devastating reminder of how badly Texas needs stronger gun laws,” said Nicole Golden, executive director of Texas Gun Sense. “Children should be safe to grow up and live their lives, but instead we face endless tragedy while lawmakers put politics over public safety. Playing harmless pranks with your friends should not come at the risk of being murdered. Texas youth deserve better.”

Martitza Wong, a Pearland-based volunteer with Moms Demand Action, said the Texas Legislature is to blame, at least in part, for fostering a culture in which people feel entitled to use gun violence as a first response rather than a last resort.

“Texas, in recent years, has been very aggressive in loosening its gun laws, and what that has done is created a culture of people feeling like they can shoot first and ask questions later,” Wong said. “That’s dangerous for everyone. For an 11-year-old child to be shot as he’s running away on the street, yes, there are self-defense principles in this state, but I think it’s kind of impossible to see how they would apply in that situation.”

“If this person came out of his house, he had to have heard their voices,” she added. “You see the small body. You hear the small child’s voice. Most likely, they’re probably laughing and making noise. How does your mind go from defending your family to chasing down a small child and shooting him in the back? That is a culture problem that has been created in our state.”

During a recent legislative special session in which several House Democrats broke quorum and fled the state to avoid voting on a congressional redistricting bill, Republicans responded with threats of “bullets in our belts” and hunting down the rogue absconders. That kind of rhetoric feeds the gun culture, Wong said. Additionally, since 2021, Texas no longer requires training for a concealed carry permit, she said.

“There are a lot of gun owners in our state who have never taken a safety course,” she said. “They’ve never learned the laws. If they’re not being guided by principles that are required to be taught, then they’re guided by the culture.”

The mother of two teenagers joined the advocacy group Moms Demand Action after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting because, she said, she was struck by the “absolute horror” endured by communities that have lost children to senseless gun violence.

Wong’s son wanted to play “senior assassin” during his senior year of high school. In the game, kids look for each other in public places and shoot each other with water guns or launch water balloons at each other.

“There have been situations where that has escalated into actual gunfire because people somehow perceive that as a risk, or maybe they’re looking for another student at their home and someone thinks that it’s a home intruder,” she said. “I begged him not to play because there are dangerous things that can happen. He ended up not playing, and I was grateful that he didn’t.”

“We’re talking about water guns and water balloons, and I was begging him not to play because there was a very real possibility that someone could get shot,” she added. “That will never be OK, but it’s something that parents do have to try to protect our kids from, unfortunately.”

Newman pointed out that  in the case of the recent Houston murder, “standing your ground doesn’t mean you can shoot whoever walks across your yard.”

“Did he shoot him because he was scared or did he shoot him because he was mad?” said Newman, who is not involved in the case and didn’t know what was said in the suspect’s police interview. The homeowner could have been scared for his life and believed that a home invasion was occurring, but those factors are unknown, and it doesn’t necessarily justify shooting someone in the back who was no longer on the property, Newman said.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who coincidentally also has an 11-year-old child, said this week that Leon would be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law,” signaling that the charges against Leon could possibly be upgraded to capital murder. Murder carries a penalty of five to 99 years; capital murder can be punished by life without the possibility of parole or death.

Newman said, at first glance, it doesn’t appear this would be a capital case.

“I think it would be a hard thing to have to prove in court,” he said. “You would have to show that he, conscientiously, was like,’ I want to kill this child.’ I think that would be a pretty hard sell for a jury. I also tend to think that would be an overcharge. I think that filing on murder is probably appropriate.”

“If the homeowner is just firing randomly, I think you could make an argument for a lesser charge of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide,” he added. “There are a lot of different factors that I’m not privy to that could drastically change what I’m saying here.”

The violent incident could have happened anywhere in the United States, Newman said. A Virginia man was charged with second-degree murder in May for allegedly shooting a teen who was filming a ding dong ditch video at the man’s home. A California man was found guilty of murder in 2023 for ramming his car into three teenage boys and killing them after they’d played the doorbell prank.

“We don’t live in Mayberry anymore and we don’t know what a person’s intent is if they are knocking on your door,” Newman said.

Even though TikTok pranks are ill-advised, they don’t deserve the death penalty, the attorney added.

“Is it something where a homeowner might call the cops on them and they might get yelled at by the police? Sure,” he said. “But as far as what happened, it’s just a tragedy, and there’s no rationalizing that.”