'Fire Challenge' Leaves 12-Year-Old Girl Severely Burned

A 12-year-old girl from Detroit will be spending the next few months in the hospital after becoming "engulfed in flames" while emulating "fire challenge" videos she and her friends had watched on YouTube. The "fire challenge" involves pouring a flammable liquid, such as lighter fluid or rubbing alcohol, on a part of your body and then igniting it. 

Timiyah Landers was at her home with some friends when the challenge went awry. The girl's mother, Brandi Owens, told Fox 2 that she heard an explosion and saw her daughter "running up my hallway on fire from her knees to her hair."

Owen's fiancee rushed the girl into the bathroom and extinguished the flames in the shower. He then drove her to the hospital where she was treated for second and third-degree burns that covered 49% of her body. 

While Landers is lucky to be alive, she has a long and painful road to recovery with at least three more surgeries in the coming months.

Owens blames sites like YouTube, and believes they should do more to censor videos that promote risky and potentially deadly behavior. 

“They need to delete this mess," Owens said to WXYZ. "It should be censored. That’s nothing that a kid should come across. I could have lost my baby, by the grace of God she’s alive. If I wasn’t home, I would have walked in to my baby dead." 

Challenge videos have become extremely popular on YouTube, and while most are harmless, some can have serious consequences if they go wrong. A young girl in the United Kingdom suffered second-degree burns when she participated in the "deodorant challenge" back in May. 


Sponsored Content

Sponsored Content