Just two days after the local Sheriff’s Office issued a warning about safety concerns with high school seniors playing “Nerf wars,” a teenager was run over by a vehicle while playing the game.
The 16-year-old boy from Rice, Minn., was hiding on the ground next to the vehicle he arrived in at Southside Park in Sauk Rapids when his friend accidentally drove over him just before 3 p.m. Saturday, according to Sauk Rapids Police Chief Perry Beise.
The boy was treated at the scene by passersby and later brought to St. Cloud Hospital for noncritical injuries, according to Beise.
“Juveniles were involved in Nerf Wars in what has become an annual occurrence,” Beise said in a news release. “[We] advise parents to encourage their children to cease and desist before there is a fatality. Some of the activities in the Nerf wars could be considered at minimum a crime of disorderly conduct.”
Last Thursday, Stearns County officials issued a statement about high schoolers continuing to play the “senior assassin” or Nerf wars games, where students stalk and shoot each other with water guns or Nerf guns in an attempt to be the last student standing.
“Every year law enforcement agencies throughout Stearns County get calls reporting suspicious people that turn out to be students playing this game,” the county statement says. “The safest thing for students is not to play.”
Stearns County officials asked students who are participating not to trespass, to use brightly colored guns that are clearly identified as toys, and to not run or hide if they encounter law enforcement.
Officials have been warning about safety concerns over the game for more than a decade. In 2015, two Lakeville South High School students died in a car crash while playing Nerf wars, after the driver of the truck they were in veered and overcorrected, causing the vehicle to roll multiple times.
