A woman from Minnesota in the United States is facing jail for having shot at her boyfriend during a ‘prank that they were performing to increase their social media followers’.

Monalisa Perez, 19-year-old, shot her boyfriend Pedro Ruiz in his chest while he held a book to protect himself believing that it would stop the bullet, reports www.inuth.com.

The couple have a three-year-old child and Monalisa is pregnant with their second child, which is due in September. Along with the 3-year-old child, there were nearly 30 onlookers who saw the duo perform the stunt.

As per a report in BBC, Ruiz’s aunt Claudia Ruiz said that her nephew had informed her that he wanted to do the stunt ‘because we want more viewers, we want to get famous’. She even said that she had pleaded them not to take it up, ‘He had told me about that idea and I said, ‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Why are you going to use a gun? Why?'‘ Claudia Ruiz recalled.

However, defending the two, she said that it was just a prank which had gone wrong. ‘They were in love, they loved each other,’ she said.

Having been charged for the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, the woman has been booked into a county jail. She is facing charges of second-degree manslaughter and will have her first appearance in court on Wednesday.

County Attorney James Brue said that the book that Ruiz used was a hardcover encyclopaedia. The weapon that she used was a .50-calibre Desert Eagle handgun.

The two cameras that recorded the incident that took place on Monday have been seized by the police. It was a single gunshot that was fired from nearly one foot (30cm) away.

She has stated that the stunt was not her but her boyfriend’s idea. Before doing the stunt, she had even tweeted that they were going to shoot ‘one of the most dangerous videos ever and had added that it was his idea.

the duo had started their YouTube channel in March in which they wanted to show the ‘the real life of a young couple who happen to be teen parents’. The most recent video that the two had uploaded was on the day of the accident and was titled: ‘Doing scary stunts at the fair’.