Did a man die while trying to take a photo with a mechanical dinosaur that trapped his head in its mouth? No, that's not true: A Facebook version of the video shows the same man extracting his head from the dinosaur's mouth without life-threatening injuries. The photo identified as the victim is actually of a different man who was shot and killed in Texas in 2023.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) made by the X account @Daily__Front on Oct. 23, 2026. The post included a video and a caption that read:
BREAKING NEWS 🚨 : 🇨🇳 A 28-year-old man reportedly died while attempting to take a photo with a mechanical dinosaur at an attraction, and his family is seeking $1.5 million in damages.
This is what a still from the video posted on X looked like:
(Image source: post by @Daily__Front on X.)
The post is embedded below:
BREAKING NEWS 🚨 : 🇨🇳 A 28-year-old man reportedly died while attempting to take a photo with a mechanical dinosaur at an attraction, and his family is seeking $1.5 million in damages. https://t.co/bAW2n6jrFG
-- Daily Front (@Daily__Front) October 23, 2026
Below is a full transcript of the narration in the video:
A 28-year-old man died after putting his head inside a mechanical dinosaur's mouth for a photo. His family is now suing the attraction for $1.5 million.
Andre Mitchell was visiting a dinosaur theme park when he allegedly ignored a warning sign and stuck his head inside the dinosaur's mouth. Suddenly, the jaws closed, trapping his head. Andre struggled desperately, but he couldn't escape. At first, his family thought it was a joke, but when they realized he was in serious trouble, they rushed to alert staff. By the time rescuers arrived, Andre was barely responding. Despite their efforts, he died from asphyxiation.
His family sued the attraction, arguing that the dinosaur's design was dangerous and that safety measures were inadequate. The park argued that clear warning signs prohibited visitors from approaching the dinosaur or putting any part of their bodies inside its mouth. The court ruled that Andre bore most of the responsibility, but the park was also partly at fault for failing to prevent access to a dangerous mechanism. The attraction was ordered to pay his family $450,000. Do you think this verdict was fair?
Searches of Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) for "Man dies AND photo AND mechanical dinosaur" showed results unrelated to the claim. Similarly, searches of Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) of wording directly from the post only showed social media posts of the claim, not any results from established news sources proving that the event ever happened.
A Google image search (archived here) of a still from the beginning of the video posted on X revealed that the video has been exclusively posted on social media, but not by any legitimate news sources or loved ones of the supposedly deceased "Andre Mitchell." A screenshot of the visual matches for the video is included below:
(Image source: Google.)
Additionally, Lead Stories found a Facebook version of the video showing the man sticking his head into the mechanical dinosaur's mouth, in which he extracts it without what appear to be life-threatening injuries (archived here). A screenshot from that video is included below:
(Image source: Facebook.)
The version of the video posted by @Daily__Front on X includes images and video clips unrelated to the mechanical dinosaur claim. For example, at the five-second mark, a picture of the person the video claims is "Andre Mitchell" appears. However, he is not the same person who put their head in the mechanical dinosaur. Lead Stories found that the image is actually of a 21-year-old man with a different name who was shot and killed in Texas in 2023 (archived here).
At least two other moments from the @Daily__Front video are unrelated to the claim. At the 23-second mark, there is a clip of a man covering his face with his hand, visibly emotional. That clip is taken from a segment that aired on the talk show The Doctors (archived here). In the segment, the man shares that he was imprisoned for 39 years for a crime he did not commit. The @Daily__Front blurs out the logo from The Doctors, as shown in the comparison image below:
(Image source: comparison of footage included in a video posted to X by @Daily__Front [left] and footage from the show The Doctors [right].)
Another clip included in the video, which appears at the 39-second mark, shows a woman standing at a microphone. That footage is from a criminal trial held in Wisconsin in 2026. As shown beginning at the one-minute, 46-second mark in a video from the Wisconsin news station WBAY, the woman in the clip is a district attorney involved with the case (archived here). A comparison image is included below:
(Image source: comparison of footage included in a video posted to X by @Daily__Front [left] and footage from WBAY [right].)
