Teen dies in show-like stunt

“Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville expressed sympathy to the family of a teen who died last week after falling from a moving pickup in a stunt possibly inspired by the TV show.

“My heart goes out to the kid’s family, but we’ve done everything we can to prevent this type of thing from happening,” Knoxville told The Knoxville News-Sentinel.

“We don’t take submissions. We never have,” he said. “We have warnings at the beginning and the end. In every interview I have ever given, I have stressed: ‘Don’t try this at home.’ We steer away from stunts that are easily imitable.”

Adam Ports, 18, of Wooster, Ohio, and three fellow students at Tiffin University set a chair on fire and threw it from the back of a moving truck while friends photographed the stunt. Officials said Ports either jumped or fell from the truck and died the next day from head injuries.

“They were trying to create some type of stunt like they have on the TV show ‘Jackass,’ ” Seneca County Sheriff’s Sgt. Brian Hescht wrote in a report. The now-defunct MTV show of crude stunts was made into a movie that debuted last month.