A standout Texas high school baseball star is on life support after he was seriously injured while playing a water gun game wildly popular among teens across the US.
Isaac Leal, 17, a senior at South Grand Prairie High School, was chasing his classmates through an Arlington neighborhood on April 20 when he hopped on the back of a parked Jeep with his “Senior Assassin” target inside, NBCDFW reported.
Cellphone and doorbell camera footage captured the teen standing on the back bumper of the Jeep right before his target drove away at a “high speed.”
“They were playing ‘Senior Assassin.’ He jumped on a young girl’s Jeep as it was parked. The girl reversed and took off and drove for five minutes at a high speed to where he could not jump off,” Leal’s mother, Raquel Vazquez, told the outlet.
“She hit a dip and that’s where I was told, allegedly, he flew off the Jeep and hit his head.”
A doorbell camera captured the teen lying on the pavement, surrounded by first responders tending to the unconscious teen.
Leal suffered a severe head injury in the fall and was rushed to Medical City Arlington, where he remains on life support.
The Arlington Police Department said they were made aware of the situation and have launched an investigation.
The 17-year-old was only weeks away from graduation and had scholarship offers to pitch in college. However, doctors fear he may never fully recover from the life-changing head injury he sustained playing “Senior Assassin.”
“I believe God does full miracles, so I’m asking for full restoration, full restoration of every cell of his body, not the vegetable state that they say,” his mother said.
In the viral “Senior Assassin” trend, players download an app that provides the location of targets. Then, armed with water guns, players need to “kill” their targets by spraying them.
In the wake of the tragedy, Leal’s father warned other parents that the game can put their child at risk of being seriously injured despite its innocent nature.
“People need to be aware of games like this, as a teenager, you’re not aware if something bad is gonna happen,” Jose Leal told CBS News.
“You never think it’s going to hit close to home until it does,” Vazquez said.
South Grand Prairie High Principal Larry Jones also told parents that students caught playing the game on campus would face punishment, “including the loss of senior privileges,” according to a statement seen by CBS.
School districts and police departments across the US have previously warned that the game could have deadly consequences following a series of incidents involving players.
In addition to seeing participants suspiciously hiding around town and frequently trespassing on other people’s property, the use of water guns can produce deadly consequences if bystanders suspect the weapon is real.
Last June, a high school senior in Kansas was left paralyzed from the waist down when a furious father shot him in a Walmart parking lot after the teen fired a toy gun at the man’s daughter during a game of “Senior Assassin.”
The single shot left the teen with severe injuries, as it “punctured his duodenum (upper part of the small intestine) and damaged his spinal cord, causing loss of sensation from the waist down,” his parents said at the time.
“The bullet caused significant damage to his body, necessitating the fusion of his L1, L2, and L3 spinal bones.”
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