11-year-old girl disfigured after 'friends' pour boiling water on her during sleepover

A Bronx, New York, girl was left with second-degree burns on her face and upper torso after a group of girls she was attending a sleepover with poured boiling on her while she slept.

Jamoneisha Merritt, 11, was apparently warned by the other children not to fall asleep at the slumber party or they would take some sort of action against her.

"Her and her friend got into an argument. She told her if she goes to sleep, they were gonna do something to her," one of Merritt's cousins told WABC-TV. "So, it was like 3:00 in the morning so she went to sleep."

SShortly after Merrit went to bed, the host of the sleepover reportedly boiled hot water and poured it over the 11-year-old victim, who woke up in agonizing pain and was rushed by medics to Harlem Hospital's burn unit.

WARNING: The images in this tweet are disturbing.

Merritt's mother, Ebony, says her daughter is in such physical and mental anguish that they are not allowing the young girl to look at her injuries yet.

"She's very sad. She's emotionally messed up. She don't understand why they did that to her. She thought they was her friends," Ebony Merritt told NY1 News. "I was told that they didn't like her. And they just been bullying her. They've been on Snapchat. It's been going on several times. The girl admitted it. 'I don't like her. I wanted to do it.'"

An unnamed 12-year-old girl has been charged with felony assault over the crime.

According to NY1 News, the incident was apparently part of a "game" called the "hot water challenge" in which an unsuspecting victim has boiling water thrown on them.

An 8-year-old girl died earlier this month after drinking boiling water through a straw in what seemed to be a variant of the same "challenge."