15-Year-Old Accidentally Shoots Herself While Filming TikTok Video

A 15-year-old girl named Yazmin Esmeralda from Mexico asked her brother to record her holding a gun in their grandmother’s home. This turned out to be a terrible idea and now she is no longer with us.

Yazmin was killed after putting on this risky act for a TikTok video. She asked her younger brother to record her holding a 9-mm Uzi submachine gun that she found in a closet at their grandmother’s home.

This horrific incident happened in January in the small town of Guasave, Sinaloa when the Esmeraldas were visiting family. Yazmin was killed immediately after she shot herself and the sound of the firearm woke the girl’s mother.

It is unclear where exactly on her body she was shot or why the weapon was in the home in the first place. The only fact that is known is that Yazmin intended to pose with the gun to upload a clip on TikTok.

“That she chose to record a clip [in that way] shows that our youth is immersed in [drug cartel] culture,” Sinaloa’s state prosecutor, Sara Bruna Quiñonez Estrada, told Vice. “It’s what they hear about at all hours.”

Sara feels that the teen’s family failed to protect their daughter. According to her, “The fact that there were weapons in the house, that weren’t controlled, is the responsibility of the adults who knew there were children in the house,”

María Teresa Guerra Ochoa, head of the state’s women’s ministry said that “There are sectors [of society] that admire drug traffickers. Many of them come from poverty and so they’re seen as symbols of success.”

RIP Yazmin Esmeralda,