A 14-year-old boy Davi Nunes Moreira met a tragic end after he injected a dead butterfly and water into his body. In the beginning, the boy claimed that he had an accidental injury but later admitted to having participated in a viral social media challenge.
It was yet another instance of a viral social media challenge claiming a victim, adding to a long list of such unfortunate cases. Davi Nunes Moreira was a 14-year-old teenager, just like many teens his age from the South American nation of Brazil.
According to unconfirmed reports, he injected himself with a mixture of a dead butterfly and water using a syringe after participating in a social media challenge.
Davi Nunes Moreira (14) – 🇧🇷 nastolatek z m. Planalto (Bahia). Chłopiec zmarł w szpitalu po tym, gdy w ramach internetowego “wyzwania”, wstrzyknął sobie w nogę zmieszane z wodą resztki toksycznego motyla. pic.twitter.com/HoOy96IsCH
— Kto umarł? (@KtoUmarl) February 18, 2025
The boy initially denied participating in the challenge, but this is disputed. According to the boy’s father, his son told him that he injured himself while playing. However, as his condition worsened, he revealed the truth, and later his father also recovered a syringe from his bed.
Davi Nunes Moreira initially felt unwell, but later his condition worsened. He started experiencing severe bouts of vomiting and became incapacitated. After remaining in critical condition in a hospital for a week, he breathed his last.
Doctors attending to the teen suspect that he suffered an embolism, which is a blockage in a blood vessel caused when an air bubble enters the circulatory system during an injection.
Doctors also suspect that the teen could have suffered a catastrophic allergic reaction, causing an anaphylactic shock.
This could happen when a foreign matter, in this case, the dead butterfly, enters the circulation and triggers an immune system reaction.
Dr. Luiz Fernando D. Relvas from Hospital Santa Marcelina stated that the exact composition of the mixture injected by the boy is unknown.
Dr. Luiz also stated that if air was present in the syringe when the contents were injected, it could cause a fatal blockage in the blood vessel—a condition called embolism—which could lead to sudden death.
Medical experts take precautions to prevent such instances, but the teen was not an expert, and there is a possibility that an air bubble was present in the syringe.
The New York Post quoted Relvas, who stated:
“We don’t know how he prepared this mixture or the size of the fragments he managed to inject into the body.”