It wasn’t even
the real device.
It killed him anyway.
On February 21, 2021, Christopher Pekny, 28, of Liberty, New York, was in his garage building a homemade explosive device — a prototype meant to test a bigger one he planned to use at the gender-reveal party for his and his wife’s first child. It detonated before he ever got to the party.
Pekny was killed instantly. His brother, Michael Pekny, 27, was hospitalized with a leg injury. New York State Police and the State Police Bomb Disposal Unit investigated. No charges were ever filed. Police said the device that killed him wasn’t even the one they were planning to use at the party — it was a test.
A garage in the Catskills. A prototype, not the party.
Christopher Pekny lived in Liberty, a village of about 4,000 people in Sullivan County, New York, roughly 100 miles northwest of New York City in the Catskills. He was 28, married, and expecting his first child. At some point on the morning of February 21, 2021, he went into his garage to build an explosive device.
The device was not the one planned for the actual gender-reveal party. According to police, it was a prototype — an early version Pekny was testing before building the final device he intended to use for the celebration. He did not get the chance to test it safely. It detonated in the garage.
11:55 a.m. One brother killed. One injured.
Just before noon on Sunday, February 21, 2021, the device detonated. Christopher Pekny was killed in the blast. His younger brother, Michael Pekny, 27, was with him in the garage and was injured. Michael was transported to Garnet Medical Center in Middletown, New York, where he was treated for a leg injury.
New York State Police troopers responded to the scene, along with the New York State Police Bomb Disposal Unit, which is dispatched to secure and investigate explosions involving homemade or unidentified devices. Police did not disclose the specific composition of the device beyond confirming it was intended for the gender-reveal party and was not meant to harm anyone.
No charges were filed against anyone in connection with the explosion. Christopher Pekny’s wife was pregnant with their child at the time of his death.
“It has been two nights in a row of not being able to sleep, waiting, hoping to hear that this is all some crazy misunderstanding. But we all know that's not the reality here.”
Peter Pekny, Christopher's older brother — widely quoted in national coverage
He isn’t the only one. One reveal burned 22,744 acres.
Pekny’s death is not an isolated case. Gender-reveal parties built around homemade explosives, pyrotechnics, or smoke devices had already produced a documented run of injuries and deaths across the United States in the years before his. The most severe was the El Dorado Fire, ignited on September 5, 2020, when a couple in San Bernardino County, California, set off a pyrotechnic smoke device for a gender-reveal photoshoot at El Dorado Ranch Park.
That fire burned 22,744 acres across San Bernardino and Riverside counties, destroyed roughly 20 structures, and killed Big Bear Interagency Hotshot squad boss Charles Morton, a firefighter who died battling the blaze. The U.S. Department of Justice later announced a settlement in which the companies that designed, imported, and marketed the smoke device agreed to pay more than $4 million.
The common thread across these cases is not malice. It is the decision to build or detonate an explosive or pyrotechnic device — designed to produce a visible, dramatic effect — without the training, containment, or professional handling that any comparable commercial fireworks display requires by law. Pekny’s device was smaller in scale and killed only him. The mechanism of failure was the same: an amateur-built explosive, assembled at home, detonating in a way its builder did not anticipate.