When his parents confiscated his copy of Halo 3, 16-year old Daniel Petric retaliated by shooting both parents, killing his mother, Susan Petric. His father Mark Petric, a minister at the Life Assembly of God in Wellington, Ohio survived.
Mark Petric placed the game in his lock box, along with his 9mm handgun, which was presumably the weapon that was used in the shooting.
It seems that Daniel Petric was previously an active boy, who had been housebound for a year due to injuries sustained in a snowboarding accident. His lawyers speculated that the enormous amount of stress played a role in the tragic events that took place on October 20th, 2007.
According to the boy’s father, Daniel Petric was heard to say in the courtroom:
Dad, I’m so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family, I’m so glad you are alive.
To which Mark Petric replied:
You’re my son. You’re my boy.
It is a truly a heart-wrenching story, which might well be dismissed by some as another case of kids being violent after playing violent video games and still others will use it to highlight the dangers of keeping guns in the home. These cases are always infinitely more complex than the headlines reveal. This is a tragedy that has claimed one life and irrevocably altered the course of two others.
We have not published the photo of Daniel Petric because he is a minor. [Cleveland.com via Kotaku, Geekologie]
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Tags: Breaking News, halo-3, news, sad
3 responses
Dec 17, 2008 at 12:38 am
Here we go again. The disappearance and subsequent death of Brandon Crisp sparked outrage against “Call of Duty 4″ and the Xbox Live community, and now this asshole – get over it, he shot his parents, he’s a complete and utter asshole – is going to further the cause of the technophobic religious right in their unfounded crusade against new media, because they’re too petty and ignorant to do any proper fact-checking. This, of course, would not be a problem if the majority of their readership were not just as petty and ignorant and actually bothered to do some fact-checking of their own, but that isn’t the case. They’ll gobble up whatever the networks feed them about this story, which will have everything to do with “Halo 3″ and video games’ corruption of society, and nothing to do whatsoever with a mindless, twisted young man and his irresponsible parents, one of whom is now dead.
Another sad day, and sad month(s) ahead, for video games and gamers everywhere.
Feb 26, 2009 at 7:06 am
I agree with everything Spinoculars just said.
Mar 31, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I also agree with Spinoculars
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