Beijing, July 20 (Xinhua) A 14-year-old boy in China’s Sichuan Province has been drinking gasoline to become a “valiant fighter” like his hero Optimus Prime in the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the fallen”, a media report said.
“Since the boy watched the film, he started drinking gasoline to become a valiant fighter,” the West China Metropolis daily said citing his father.
He also likes to inhale the liquid gas in lighters, his mother said. He would steal gas lighters from her grocery store.
“We were shocked when one day we found out the boy drank half a bottle of gasoline from our motorcycle,” the father said.
“Since my son started drink gasoline, his intelligence quotient dropped sharply,” he said. “Before that, he was a very smart boy, and he could even repair the television. But now he did not know the answer of 7 plus 17.”
The worried parents finally took their son to a Yibin City hospital, in Sichuan, where the doctors told them that the boy had mental disorders and strong “gasoline dependence”.
“The gasoline contains a lot of lead, which can do harm to people’s brain. To make things worse, the boy is in the physical development stage, and the lead has caused serious damage to his body,” Peng Houquan, a doctor at the hospital said.
Hollywood blockbuster “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has earned about 400 million yuan ($58.4 million) since it debuted in China some two weeks ago.
rounak