Video | YouTube prankster thrusts head into cement-filled microwave oven, nearly dies | HT Tech

Video | YouTube prankster thrusts head into cement-filled microwave oven, nearly dies

A 22-year-old and his friends poured seven bags of Polyfilla cement sludge into an unplugged microwave oven.

By: HT CORRESPONDENT
| Updated on: Dec 10 2017, 11:58 IST
After an hour of unfruitful attempts to free the prankster, his friends finally called the fire department.
After an hour of unfruitful attempts to free the prankster, his friends finally called the fire department. (Twitter)
After an hour of unfruitful attempts to free the prankster, his friends finally called the fire department.
After an hour of unfruitful attempts to free the prankster, his friends finally called the fire department. (Twitter)

American YouTuber Jay Swingler nearly lost his life while performing a mindless stunt in front of a camera to impress his followers earlier this week.

The 22-year-old prankster and his friends poured seven bags of Polyfilla cement sludge into an unplugged microwave oven on Thursday. Swingler then stuck a breathing tube into his mouth and covered his head with a plastic bag before thrusting it into the kitchen implement. His friends used a hair-dryer to dry the cement as fast as possible.

"This is the worst-case scenario," the YouTuber was heard saying in the video. "Worse than being buried alive."

However, even Swingler did not fathom how true these words were. His breathing tube got blocked as the cement started to dry, and the youngster began suffocating. After an hour of unfruitful attempts to free the prankster, his friends finally called the fire department.

Five minutes later, five firefighters arrived at the spot and helped Swingler retrieve his head from the microwave oven of doom. They did not look very amused.

"As funny as it may sound, this young man could quite easily have suffocated or suffered serious injury," watch commander Shaun Dakin, officer-in-charge of the West Midlands Fire Service crew, said.

Dakin said separating the microwave from Swingler's cemented head was particularly tricky. "We video-called our technical rescue colleagues for advice and eventually managed to get him unstuck. He was very relieved when we removed a large chunk of the Polyfilla with a screwdriver, allowing him to breathe more easily. But we had to be extremely careful with the screwdriver - we were working very close to his head," he explained.

The fire department officers felt Swingler and his friends wasted nearly an hour of their precious time, which could have been better spent dealing with a genuine case. "It took us nearly an hour to free him. This was clearly a call-out that could have prevented us from helping someone else in genuine need," one of them said.

Swingler, however, did not seem overtly apologetic. "I have a dumb microwave stuck to my head... do you know how people gonna remember that... I am sure this story is lot more interesting than everyday read in any other website, this is why you all are clicking on it and reacting to it," he said in another video.

The West Midlands Fire Service, for its part, posted another video on Twitter that warned people against putting their lives at risk "for the sake of other people's entertainment".

Swingler and his friends upload videos of stunts such as these on a YouTube channel called TGFBro, which has over three million subscribers. The videos, Swingler and his friends say, are "anything retarded and cool that we wanna do".

Here's how people reacted:

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First Published Date: 10 Dec, 11:58 IST
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