On April 22, 2021 Vlog Squad member Jeff Wittek released a documentary on his YouTube channel called "“Don’t Try This at Home” which explained the circumstances of an accident that happened in June of 2020, when Wittek broke his skull and face, resulting in major surgery. The incident occurred during a video shoot for Dobrik's comeback vlog when the Vlog Squad went wakeboarding in a shallow lake while being pulled by Dobrik using an excavator.
Wittek's documentary included video showing fellow Vlog Squad member Corinna Kopf swinging from the line but started to lose balance and nearly falling, prompting her to ask to be released, which Dobrik did not immediately do and causing her to accuse him of "taking things too far." When it was Wittek's turn, Dobrik swung him even higher than anyone before him and then suddenly stopped. The momentum of Wittek continuing to swing around caused him to crash into the excavator and then fall into the shallow lake while still attached to the line
This is where things start to go wrong.
Streamer Corinna Kopf is first to be spun around on the rope, but the rope is unstable and she can be heard telling David that he “takes things too far”. When Jeff gets on the rope, he is spun around by David at a dangerous speed, which is later revealed to be 60mph.
The screen goes black and in the narration, Jeff reveals he collided with the excavator. “I tore some ligaments in my leg, I broke my foot, I broke my hip, I shattered my skull in 9 places, I shattered my eye socket, I almost lost my eye, and I almost died,” he says.
While the latest installment is featured on Jeff’s Patreon behind a paywall, clips of the vlog circulating the internet show Jeff speaking about feeling abandoned by David, claiming David didn’t check in on him for a month after the accident.
Vlog Squad member Jeff Wittek revealed he injured his eye while swinging from an excavator David Dobrik was controlling
After YouTuber Jeff Wittek revealed that he was injured after bashing his face into the arm of an excavator controlled by David Dobrik, a video in which Dobrik details how he injured a childhood friend has resurfaced online.
In the 2016 video titled "HOW I RUINED MY BEST FRIEND'S LIFE," Dobrik, a YouTube vlogger who has amassed billions of views, said he threw a pinecone at his friend Alex Neumann's eye during a "pinecone fight" they had in the seventh grade. Neumann later developed flu-like symptoms after he got a staph infection in his eye, Dobrik said.
Neumann said he was hospitalized for a week and a half, had to use crutches to walk for four years, and that the injury cost him and his family $10,000.
