By Don Sweeney
The Charlotte Observer
TUSTIN, Calif. — A simple shopping trip to Target for baby supplies sent Lana Clay-Monaghan to the hospital after she became an unwilling part of an apparent TikTok prank.
“I was looking at some baby soap,” she told KTLA. “I leaned down and my whole world changed. Everything went quiet, dark and there was really no air.”
A group of young people inside the Tustin, California, store had put a bucket over her head, apparently emulating a trending TikTok prank, on Sunday, March 26.
“I started freaking out,” Clay-Monaghan, a cancer survivor who now has epilepsy, told KCBS. “I was screaming.”
After she pulled the bucket off her head, Clay-Monahgan told the station she saw the youths laughing and filming her before she passed out. Paramedics took her to a hospital.
“I keep looking over my shoulder. I’m a nervous wreck,” she told KTLA.
In a news release, Tustin police said they are investigating the incident as an assault. Security video from the store shows four boys pick up a bucket and put it over Clay-Monaghan’s head. The boys then run out of the store.
Police said they suspect the youths were emulating a social media trend.
Numerous other videos posted to TikTok show people carrying out the prank, in which they put a bucket over a stranger’s head and film the results.
Police ask that anyone with information call 714-573-3245 or email gschaller@tustinca.org.
Tustin is a city of 80,000 people about 35 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
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