A 10-year-old boy was in critical condition after he was shot while playing the “ding dong ditch” prank in Houston on Saturday night, the authorities said.
The Houston Police Department responded to a report of a shooting just before 11 p.m. in the east area of the city, the department said.
The boy, along with several friends, had approached a home in their neighborhood and knocked on the door of a residence, the police said.
In the doorbell ditch prank, better known as the ding dong ditch, a person rings a doorbell and tries to run away before anyone opens the door.
On Saturday evening, “the person inside that house came out and shot at the 10-year-old,’’ Lt. Amber Khan of the Houston Police Department told KHOU, a local CBS affiliate, at the scene.
She added that “the 10-year-old sustained a couple of gunshot wounds.”
Emergency responders with the Houston Fire Department transported the boy to a hospital, where he was in critical condition on Sunday, according to Shay Awosiyan, a spokesman for the Police Department.
It was not immediately clear if there were any other injuries in the shooting.
Mr. Awosiyan said a person was detained after the shooting, but did not publicly identify the person or say whether the person had been charged.
The so-called “ding dong” prank, which has been popularized on the TikTok social media platform, has led to other tragedies in the past.
In May, a Virginia man was charged with second-degree murder after fatally shooting a teenager who was filming the prank with two friends, according to court records and local authorities.
In 2020, a man in California crashed into a car of six teenagers, killing three of them, after they played a similar prank on him. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2023.
Johnny Diaz is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news from Miami.
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