Anakin Zehring Kansas teen paralyzed from the waist down in water pistol prank gone wrong after being shot by outraged man, Ruben Marcus Contreras, who moments earlier his daughter had been targeted in the social media trend game at a Goddard Walmart parking lot.
Play stupid games…. win stupid prizes.
A Kansas teen was left paralyzed from the waist down when a furious father shot him at a Walmart parking lot after the teen fired a toy gun at the man’s daughter as part of a controversial social media trend.
Anakin Zehring, 18, was in a car with two other males outside of a Walmart in Goddard, Kansas on May 11 when they spotted two teens walking towards the building and conducted a drive-by shooting with gel blasters, according to the Wichita Eagle.
A passenger inside the car shouted ‘I am your senior assassin’ as the two teens — a girl and her boyfriend — were shot at multiple times with the water-filled polymer beads.
‘Senior Assassin’ is an elaborate game of tag, where participating high school seniors are given a ‘target’ and are usually asked to record ‘tagging’ their victims and posting it to social media off school grounds.
Most games consist of players using water guns, water balloons, or a gel blaster as in Zehring’s case.
Despite the game’s seeming ‘playful’ innocence, (after all… what could go wrong?) multiple police departments warned that the nationwide game could have deadly consequences.
The couple claimed they were shot with several rounds of the beads before rushing inside to escape the ‘mock’ shooting, according to KWCH.
Once inside, the girl called her dad, Ruben Marcus Contreras, to tell him they were shot with the gel blasters and didn’t know who the teens were.
The girl’s boyfriend, only identified as ‘GB’ in the police affidavit, confronted the teens and was met with one of them using an expletive and ‘later told him to meet him out back of the Walmart,’ the outlet reported.
The teen boys, who parked their car, attempted to enter the Walmart, but were kicked out and walked over to a nearby Dairy Queen.
When Contreras arrived at the store, his daughter pointed the teens out, who were getting back into their car, a Chevy Spark.
The incensed dad drove through the parking lot, as Zehring was backing out of the spot and confronted the teen, attempting to open the driver’s side door.
The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office stated Contreras then running up to the driver’s side and pulling out a firearm from the right side of his waistband. The dad allegedly then fired one round into the back of the teen boy’s vehicle, striking Zehring.
The firearm was described as a 9mm Smith and Wesson handgun according to a police affidavit.
During questioning, Zehring told cops that he wasn’t the one shooting the gel blaster, a claim that was contradicted as one of the passengers told authorities Zehring was the shooter according to the nypost.
The single shot left the high school senior 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 wrote on a GoFundMe.
‘The bullet caused significant damage to his body, necessitating the fusion of his L1, L2, and L3 spinal bones,’ the teen’s parents, Kenly Zehring and Jeremy Zehring stated in the fundraiser created four days ago.
The teen was initially hospitalized at St. Francis in Wichita in critical condition before being transferred to Madonna Rehabilitation Facility in Omaha, Nebraska.
Anakin was a senior at Campus High School, and was getting ready to graduate before the shooting. A graduation ceremony was provided for the teen at hospital, KAKE reported.
Contreras was arrested on May 15 and charged with attempted first-degree murder, according to KSN.
He was booked at the Sedgwick County Detention Facility on $300,000 bail and is currently out on bond.
As of Friday morning, the fundraiser for Zehring had raised $9,686 out of a $50,000 goal.
It remained unclear if the teen will ever walk again.
