Barber Pretends To Cut Off Boy’s Ear In Revenge Prank

NAPLES, FL — Here’s the set-up to a Naples, Florida, barber’s bloody prank on a 10-year-old boy named Vito: A couple of months ago, the kid planted a fake cockroach in his shop. The barber, Jude Sannicandro, 43, said the phony cockroach scared him because he’d found one in the bathroom sink earlier that day. He vowed to get even, to which Vito basically said “game on” because there wasn't anything the barber could do that would make him cry.

The video camera rolling, Sannicandro exacts his revenge and pretends to cut off the Vito’s ear while shaving his neck. He smears fake vampire blood on the boy’s neck and face and produces a rubber ear.

Vito, the boy, displays a calm terror during the ordeal. “Mommy!” he shouts as Sannicandro shushes him and applies pressure with the towel that contained a plastic bag of fake blood. Vito squeezes his eyes shut.

“Oh my god,” the barber says. “I think we need to call an ambulance.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Vito replies, adding, “Please call mommy.”

Sannicandro thinks a Band-Aid will cover it and Vito agrees, but he still wants his mom.

“I don’t want your brothers to see it, they’re gonna get scared,” Sannicandro says. “I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I don’t know what to do.”

The fake ear slips to the floor. “Oh my god,” Sannicandro says in mock shock.

“Is that my ear?” Vito asks.

“Hey Mom,” Sannicandro begins until Vito interrupts him.

“Get over here now! Now!”

The barber allows that he can probably just glue the ear back on, but Vito isn’t convinced.

“Look at my ear,” Vito says. “It’s on the ground.”

When someone begins to laugh, Vito is adamant. “It’s not funny,” he says.

“What happened?” Mom asks.

“He moved,” Sannicandro says, then explains, “Remember that roach prank when you said I couldn’t make you cry? You’re fine.”

Everyone laughs in the end and Vito says he didn’t cry and gets the last word — maybe. The two have been playing pranks on one another in all the years Sannicandro has been cutting Vito’s hair and he understands the boy may up the ante.

“I’m not worried,” Sannicandro told Yahoo Lifestyle. “I will always outdo Vito.”

Was it just a harmless prank?

Many people commenting on YouTube, where the video has been viewed more than 440,000 times, are siding with the barber, though some wondered how a grown man could be scared of a cockroach.

“It was very cruel,” one person wrote. “Kids play innocent pranks, so suck it up, dude …”

“This is just cruel,” wrote another. “It's a child for god sake! As for comments like ‘Turns boys into men’ … Crap like this turns boys into toxic ,bullying pseudo tough men. Something Americans sadly seem to think are admirable traits.”

Many are also calling Vito a pretty good sport about the whole thing.

“This kid is actually chill,” one person wrote. “If I thought my ear fell off I [would] probably feel like fainting. Plus that was a lot of ‘blood’!! Those type of things make me queasy so I think the boy did well remaining calm!”

Someone else wrote: “He was scared but that's still pretty impressive for a kid. Most kids would've cried as hard as they could. They would've jumped out of the chair …”

What do you think? Did the barber go too far? Tell us what you think in the comments.

Image and video via YouTube