ROSEVILLE, Mich. – A father in Roseville want parents to be vigilant after his 8-year-old daughter was hospitalized trying to imitate something she saw on TikTok.
Doctors said they had never seen anything like it when Dhakota was brought in after swallowing a quarter.
The video was a magic trick that included a die. When she couldn’t find any dice, she thought a quarter might work instead.
“She said she couldn’t swallow,” her father recalled. “She couldn’t breathe hardly and that’s when me and her mother started to panic.”
He said Dhakota had only been in the bathroom for a few minutes -- a short amount of time, but long enough to give them the scare of their lives. Dhakota struggled to breath as she tried to explain what happened.
Her parents rushed her to two different hospitals before a doctor was able to see her.
“They immediately took her back,” Her father said. “I didn’t know how bad the situation was until they brought the x-ray back and I saw the quarter right there in her esophagus. It killed me, man.”
The quarter was lodged sideways in her throat. Doctors said she would need an emergency procedure that would keep her in the hospital overnight.
“This could happen to any child," her father said.
The video App TikTok has been linked to dozens of stories about dangerous viral trends including the Tide Pod challenge, the Skull Breaker challenge, the Outlet challenge and most recently, the Benadryl challenge.
All challenges have landed multiple children and teenagers in the hospital.
Dhakota’s father wants parents to be aware and be vigilant.
'Everybody in the city, anybody in the world they should delete that off their kid’s phone or their tablet because it’s dangerous, man," he said. “I could’ve lost my kid.”
Dhakota is out of the hospital and is still a little sore. Her family said she’s going to go back to see the doctor soon to get checked out and they hope this doesn’t happen to any other family.