16-Year-Old TikToker Gets 75 Percent of Body Burned After Makeshift Torch Explodes

A North Carolina teenager is hospitalized after a dangerous TikTok trend left his body engulfed in flames.

The 16-year-old, Mason Dark, took part in a TikTok trend with his friends that involved spraying an aerosol can into a lighter to create a makeshift torch. Things went awry when the can exploded and set Dark on fire. He reportedly ran to a nearby river to douse the flames, but he had already suffered severe burns to 75 percent of his body, including his face.

The high school football player and track runner was rushed to the UNC Burn Center in Chapel Hill, where he was sedated and underwent skin graft surgery. According to Fox affiliate WRAL, Dark will recover in the burn unit for six months.

The teen’s mother, Holli Dark, told WRAL that her son’s t-shirt was seared into his skin while he tried to remove it in the river. “[We] come to find out now from the surgery, that he’s got the third-degree burns,” she said. “It’s like a T in his back and it was from him taking off his shirt, and then it got stuck or something.”

She added that his physical appearance had gotten worse since the incident explaining that “he is unrecognizable” and “the way he looked when those kids saw him when he first came in, to what he looks like now, it’s 100 times different.”

Dark’s family set up a GoFundMe page to cover his medical bills and other expenses needed for recovery. “We thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers, support, and love,” Dark’s grandmother wrote on their GoFundMe page that has already raised over $23,000 of the $25,000 goal as of this writing.