Mother Charged After Son Pours Boiling Water on Sleeping 11-Year-Old Friend

Stock photo of an ambulance. (Michael Gil via Wikimedia Commons)

A Kentucky mother has been charged after her child allegedly threw boiling water over an 11-year-old friend as he slept.

Billy Oliver suffered 2nd and 3rd-degree burns, according to a police report, after boiling water was thrown over him at around 2:30 a.m. on July 24, while he stayed over at a friend’s house in Clay County, Kentucky.

His friend’s mother, Angela Guth, 42, has been charged with wanton endangerment in the first degree and criminal abuse of a child in the second degree, after allegedly not seeking medical help for the boy in the immediate aftermath.

According to a statement from the Clay County Sheriff’s office, following the incident, Gruth “failed to contact the child’s parents or seek medical treatment until several hours later.”

The Sheriff’s office added, “That child had to be sent to Cincinnati Burn Unit to treat 2nd and 3rd-degree burns.”

Angela Guth (Clay County Detention Center)

Oliver had left his friend playing the video game, “Fornite,” and gone to bed when he was staying at his house, reported WYMT. He was woken by a searing pain in the middle of the night, as his friend threw boiling water on him.

“On a zero to ten scale how bad it hurt, it was a ten,” he said.

The attack was inspired by the so-called “hot water” challenge that has caused many injuries and even a death in the past couple of years, according to WYMT.

“Uh, so you had to take some boiling hot water 212 degrees and pour it on someone or you had to drink it,” said Oliver.

Photographs obtained by the news outlet show the 11-year-old with burns to his shoulders and upper arm.

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Currently, doctors do not believe Billy will need skin grafts.

“When I first heard about it I was amazed,” Dr. Susan Pollack, a pediatrician from the Kentucky Children’s Hospital, told WYMT. “I mean, I am familiar with various things that people do that aren’t very wise. To burn someone is to inflict such incredible pain and suffering on them and I don’t think that is the intent.”

Both charges against Guth carry a possible punishment of 1-5 years.

Hot Water Challenge

The “hot water challenge” has come to mean two distinct things in the last couple of years.

One was a trend that took off in the mid-winter freeze that gripped much of America last year. People would throw boiling hot water into the sub-zero air, forming dramatic patterns as the vapor instantly freezes to tiny ice particles—when the stunt went well.

That trend put many adults and children in hospitals with burns.

The other so-called “hot water challenge” is the one that hospitalized Oliver.

It appears to have started around 2017, with several hospitals across the country reporting incidents of children copying videos of people apparently having boiling water thrown on them, and even drinking boiling water, apparently without harm.

Like Oliver, an 11-year-old girl was burned as she slept at a slumber party in the Bronx in 2017 when her friends threw boiling water over her.

In 2018, an Indiana teen was left with second-degree burns to his face and chest after his friends watched videos of the challenge on YouTube before he fell asleep.

In 2017, an 8-year-old girl died in Florida several months after she drank boiling water through a straw, leaving permanant scarring and damage to her windpipe.

The girl’s aunt, Diane Johnson, told WPEC News that the girl’s cousins had dared her to drink the water. “They dared her and she said, ‘OK, I’m going to show y’all I’m not scared, I’m going to do this,'” Johnson said.

The girl and her cousins had watched the “hot water challenge” on YouTube, showing someone apparently drinking boiling water with a straw.

A GoFundMe set up for the family’s expenses said that the girl had to undergo emergency surgery, and doctors had to remove scarred tissue from her windpipe. She had breathing issues after that, leading to an emergency tracheotomy.

Johnson said that parents should monitor what their kids watch on YouTube.

“Parents, talk to your kids about these challenges,” she told CBS. “Don’t just let it go by and just give them your phone and let them be. No. Watch what they’re watching.”