KNOXVILLE, Iowa – A woman in Iowa was killed Saturday after she was struck by debris from an explosion at a gender reveal party, police said.
The Marion County Sheriff's Office responded just after 4 p.m. to a call about a woman seriously injured in an explosion in rural Knoxville, according to a press release obtained by NBC News. The 56-year-old woman was pronounced dead on the scene.
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Investigators said there was a gender reveal announcement involving an explosion that resulted in the woman being struck and killed by flying debris.
The state fire marshal and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are investigating, the sheriff's office said.
Gender-reveal parties do not typically feature explosives. Rather, it is common for expectant parents to use color-coded cakes, balloons, or confetti as the gender-reveal mechanism. However, some have used more extreme spectacles to reveal the gender of their unborn child, sometimes with disastrous results.
In April 2017, Border Patrol agent Dennis Dickey and his wife threw a gender-reveal party in Arizona that resulted in a 47,000-acre wildfire. According to NPR, Dickey fired a rifle at a target set to explode with either pink or blue powder. The target was packed with highly explosive Tannerite, which immediately caught the surrounding brush on fire.
"Dickey fired shots at the Tannerite target," federal authorities said in a statement, "ultimately causing an explosion that started a fire that spread and resulted in damage to more than 45,000 acres of land managed by the State of Arizona, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and various private landholders."
Dickey pleaded guilty to starting the fire in October 2018.