Gender Reveal Kills Grandmother in DIY Pipe Bomb Explosion

Gender reveal parties are problematic for a whole slew of reasons, but as people try to go bigger with their “reveals,” the parties are actually turning deadly.

A family in Knoxville, Iowa was preparing for an upcoming gender reveal over the weekend by literally testing out different types of homemade explosives. During one of the tests, a piece of shrapnel struck Pamela Kreimeyer, a 56-year-old grandmother, in the head and killed her instantly.

“On Saturday afternoon five family members and the expectant mother gathered and placed gunpowder in the bottom of a homemade stand that was welded to a metal base plate,” said the sheriff.

“This family got together for what they thought was going to be a happy event with no intent for anyone to get hurt.”

According to CNN, the family “drilled a hole in the side of the stand to install a fuse and placed a piece of wood on top of the gunpowder, before adding colored powder indicating the baby’s gender,” which was supposed to burst into the air and celebrate the announcement of the child’s supposed gender.

But what actually happened was that someone put tape over the metal tube and unintentionally DIYed a pipe bomb. The metal tube exploded and debris flew as far as 100 yards.

It’s not the first time a gender reveal has ended in destruction. A 2017 incident in Arizona sparked an $8 million wildfire. Last year, a party with poorly aimed fireworks sent the crowd scattering. Earlier this year, a car burst into flames in Australia when it was supposed to be sending out blue smoke.

However, this is the first known incident where someone has died as a result of a gender reveal party gone wrong, suggesting that maybe DIYing explosives to announce your child, which has become far too bizarrely common lately, is actually a pretty terrible idea.