YouTube Star: I'll Pay Family of Girl Who Died

A YouTube star says she'll pay the families of two girls who engaged in a deadly experiment involving fire and alcohol, the BBC reports. The Chinese influencer, known as Ms. Yeah, apparently inspired them to replicate one of her videos, in which she heats up popcorn in a tin can. The girls' experiment turned fatal when alcohol they reportedly heated in cans sparked an explosion; Zhezhe, 14, later died from the blast, and Xiaoyu, 12, needs cosmetic surgery. But Ms. Yeah insists they weren't following her plan exactly and says her videos aren't meant to be copied. "I used only one tin can and an alcohol lamp, which is safer," she writes in a post called "The darkest day of my life," adding that the girls "used two cans and not a lamp."

But Ms. Yeah's representatives say she will pay the girls' families an undisclosed amount. That may be cold comfort to Zhezhe's father, who was pictured crying in a Beijing news report and said no money could bring back his daughter. Ms. Yeah—actual name, Zhou Xiao Hui—has developed a YouTube channel with nearly 7.5 million followers who watch her make meals at work using office equipment. "In the beginning, I just shot those videos for fun and showed them to my friends," says the 25-year-old, per the Sun. "They thought what I was doing in those videos was cool and fun so they suggested to post them online. That was how it happened. I find the whole thing quite fun too and I quite enjoy it myself." (More YouTube stories.)