One should never play with fire as a young Pakistani was killed as he pretended to shoot himself while being filmed by friends for a TikTok video, police said Thursday.
A boy named Hamidullah, 19, who according to police was quite well-known locally on social media, held a friend’s pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger, unaware the gun was loaded.
A senior police official in the northwestern Swat Valley Badshah Hazrat said, “The young man died on spot.”
Although the clip of the incident was not uploaded to TikTok due to its severity police told the reporters that the deceased’s friends circulated it among themselves and it soon spread further afield.
“The young man was locally famous and active on TikTok.”
Hazrat said.
Hamidullah, 19, had more than 8,000 followers and posted nearly 600 TikTok videos.
The majority of his TikTok videos included him playing pranks with friends, cricket, or featured life in the rugged and picturesque valley.
The loss of a 19-year-old is the latest incident of a social media stunt gone wrong in Pakistan but many have already lost their lives for the devious game of followers and views.
Last year in Karachi, a security guard was killed while playing with his rifle as he filmed a TikTok clip and in January, another teenager lost his life after being struck by a train while filming for the app in the city of Rawalpindi.
