A 20-year-old Minnesota woman has pleaded guilty to fatally shooting her boyfriend last summer as cameras rolled during a YouTube stunt meant to rocket the young man to viral fame.
Monalisa Perez entered her plea last week in Norman County District Court to second-degree manslaughter in the June 26 death of 22-year-old Pedro Ruiz III outside their northwestern Minnesota home on Hwy. 75 in Halstad. The plea agreement calls for her to serve 180 days in jail and then 10 years on supervised probation. A sentencing date sometime in February is anticipated, Norman County Attorney James Brue said Tuesday.
If convicted at trial, Perez could have received up to a 10-year term combining six or more years in prison and supervised release, but a sentence that long would have been unlikely.
Brue said he met with a sister of Ruiz's and a number of aunts on Oct. 26, and "we talked abut this proposed [plea] agreement, and they indicated that they were in support of it."
Two cameras were rolling as Ruiz's script played out, crafted in pursuit of internet fame. Authorities say Ruiz held a hardcover encyclopedia against his chest, and a pregnant Perez stood barely a foot away and squeezed off a shot from a .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol, trying to see whether the bullet would go through the book.
As soon as Ruiz went down with their 3-year-old daughter nearby, Perez called 911.
"We were doing a YouTube video, and it went wrong," a transcript of the call quoted Perez as saying. She repeated the outline of the stunt to the dispatcher and revealed that "it's all on recording."
Perez's apprehension was spelled out on her Twitter account, when she wrote a few hours before the shooting, "Me and Pedro are probably going to shoot one of the most dangerous videos ever. HIS idea not MINE."
The county attorney's office said there are multiple videos of the killing, which have so far been withheld by investigators.
Perez, who has since given birth to the couple's second child, has a YouTube channel with many videos the couple made involving various stunts and pranks. One video that went up the day before the shooting is titled, "Doing Scary Stunts at the Fair Part I." It shows the couple attending a fair several days earlier.
At one point in the video, which has been watched more than 1.8 million times, Perez said, "Imagine when we have 300,000 subscribers." Ruiz replies, "I told them, the bigger we get, I'll be throwing parties."
In another video posted shortly before the shooting, the couple encourages viewers to send in challenges for them to carry out in front of a camera.
"If it involves dying," Ruiz said, drawing laughter from Perez, "maybe that's OK. … If I'm going to die … If it's 'put a gun to your head,' no."
The channel remains live nearly six months since the shooting and has drawn millions of views since Ruiz's death.
