Kate Hackett
A 28-year-old new father from New York, Christopher Pekny, is dead after his child’s gender-reveal device exploded.
New York State Police went to a residence in Liberty, NY at 11:55 am on Sunday after receiving reports of an explosion. They later said that the gender-reveal device Pekny was creating exploded. It killed him and injured his 27-year-old brother, Michael Pekny.
The police and bomb squad are looking into the incident.
It was not specified what kind of device Pekny was making. New York Sate Police told Buzzfeed News that no charges were being filed.
In other deadly gender-reveals, last September a firefighter in California died while fighting a huge wildfire sparked by a pyrotechnic device used at a gender-reveal event. That fire burned more than 19,000 acres and forced hundreds to flee the area.
In 2019, a 56-year-old woman was killed by a pipe bomb that her family made. It exploded while planning the gender-reveal; they had come together to experiment with explosives so they could take a video for social media.
