Video games can definitely be addictive, there’s no arguing that. While violent video games remain a huge controversy in our society, the APA has found no evidence that correlates violent video games with violent behavior. But one such case would blow up the news headlines that would once again fuel the controversy that video games can drive people mad.
16-year-old Daniel Petric from Wellington, Ohio, was first introduced to the game Halo while at a friend’s house. He liked it so much that he wanted to purchase the game for himself. However both parents, who were devout Christians, were against this idea, thinking that the game was too violent and inappropriate for their teenage son. They warned him that if he was caught with any violent games, they would be confiscated, but he would regularly sneak out of the house anyway to purchase games that were violent in nature, including Halo 3. During a ski accident, Daniel caught a Staphylococcus infection, which led him to become housebound. Feeling ill and having nothing to do all day, Daniel played Halo 3 for up to 18 hours every single day without respite. When he was caught, his father, Mark, took the game away and locked it in his safe cabinet where he also stored his handgun.
Daniel claimed to have been suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms at this point. He was desperate for his fix. On October 20, 2007, he approached his parents in the living room. He instructed them, ‘’Would you close your eyes, I have a surprise for you.’’ But unbeknownst to both of them, what he was holding behind his back was a gun, which he had retrieved from his father’s safe. He first shot his father in the face, then turned the gun on his mother and fired at her head, chest, and arms. In an attempt to stage the scene as a murder-suicide, he slipped the deadly weapon in his father’s hand, telling him, ‘’Hey dad, here’s your gun. Take it.’’ When his sister and her husband arrived to the bloody scene, Daniel quickly fled in his parents’ van with his beloved game Halo 3 in the passenger seat. When police caught up with him and arrested him, he told them that his dad shot his mom.
While Daniel’s mother had died, his father ended up surviving the gunshot to his head. When recovering in the hospital, he proclaimed he hated his son, although later went on to forgive him. Daniel’s lawyer tried to argue that Daniel was so addicted violent video games that he was literally incapable of fully comprehending the reality that if he shot his parents, they would not respawn like they do in video games. The prosecutor, however, disagreed, pointing out that Daniel must have been well-aware of the gravity of his actions since he had tried to stage the scene to appear like a murder-suicide and run away after. In the end, Daniel was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 23 years.
