This water-gun recreation is enjoyable for Billings seniors however sparking concern elsewhere

BILLINGS — Billings high-school seniors are participating in a nationwide development referred to as Senior Assassin, a real-world recreation that pits teenagers in opposition to teenagers making an attempt to hunt one another with water weapons.

While the sport is meant to be a innocent prank to cap off college students’ remaining 12 months, it has led to tragic outcomes nationwide, and critics name the sport’s identify tone-deaf.

Senior Assassin is performed by graduating lessons all around the nation. In Billings, West High seniors have joined the chase.

Watch West High Seniors discuss senior murderer:

This water-gun recreation is enjoyable for Billings excessive schoolers however sparking concern elsewhere

“We run around with water guns. Just trying to shoot each other,” Landon Wagner mentioned Wednesday.

Players put on goggles or floaties for a selected motive.

“The reason we have goggles on is like our protection basically. You can’t get out if you have your goggles on,” Wagner mentioned.

Each participant will get assigned a fellow scholar as a goal.

“There’s this app. It’s called Splashin, and basically it gives, like, the location of your target,” Dylan Mainwaring mentioned

The job is to find and spray the goal inside a timed spherical.

“If you don’t get the target that you got assigned, you don’t get them out. You get a bounty on you, and then anybody can get you out for a day,” Ryan Gott mentioned.

A critical concern is that the water weapons can typically appear like actual weapons, however the West college students take pains to keep away from that difficulty. They famous that the water weapons they carry are vivid and colourful, and so they keep away from something black that would appear like an actual weapon.

Nationwide, the sport has resulted in critical harm and jail time. A teen in Indiana was charged with felony intimidation after police mistook his water gun for an actual firearm. In May 2025, a North Texas scholar was severely injured after falling off the again of a shifting Jeep whereas taking part in the sport.

Schools are posting warnings on social media, however for the scholars in Billings, security is their precedence.

“From our point of view, we’re not hurting anybody, so we see no issue with it,” Miles Kessler mentioned.

Organizer Amarah Jefferson set the bottom guidelines and ran them by her faculty principal.

“Even though it’s not, like, officially through the school, I went to our principal and I had him look them over and say, ‘These are good.’ And what he should add and make sure, like, it’s to disrupt the community the least,” Jefferson mentioned.

Certain locations are off-limits for the sport: Work, sports activities, home, faculty and church.

The recreation wraps up on the finish of May as seniors graduate.

“I don’t want the community to be upset about it or anything. I promise I’ve designed it to disrupt as little as possible and I just hope everyone has fun,” Jefferson mentioned.