Kid Shoots Parents Over Halo 3
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: Halo, 3, Shot, Parents | Themes: Digital Entertainment
A 17-year-old male shot his parents - killing his mother and wounding his father - all because they took Halo 3 away from him.
Thanks to this kid, you can now chalk another one up for politicians wanting to see the end of video games.
Way to go, buddy.
That’s probably a good summation of gamers worldwide after hearing Daniel Petric’s deadly retaliation. There’s nothing more sickening than violence related to games, especially sickening to those who depend on the medium as a source of income. Is this kid really a byproduct of electronic violence, or suffering the after-effects of a violent household? The vicious scenario, laid out by prosecutors during Monday’s trial, paints a familiar scene yanked from any crime drama.
According to the prosecutors, Daniel sneaked out of his bedroom back in September 2007, and later snuck back in with a tasty, just-purchased retail copy of Halo 3. Banned from playing games of this nature, Daniel was forced to hand over the game once caught by his parents. Thus his father, Mark Petric, a minister at New Life Assembly of God in Wellington, took the copy of Halo 3 and locked it away in a lockbox located in his closet (which incidentally was the same place he kept a 9mm handgun tucked away).
A month later, Daniel broke into the lockbox and retrieved both the Halo 3 game and the 9mm handgun. Once both items were in hand, Daniel went downstairs and approached his parents as they lounged on the couch. He asked them to close their eyes, claiming the he had a "surprise." Mark Petric, 45, testified that he was actually expecting a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, that pleasant surprise turned out to be a shot in the head, killing the mother and "gravely" wounding the father. Daniel immediately place the gun in his father’s hand, saying "Hey Dad, here’s your gun. Take it."
Mark, still alive, blood pouring from his bullet wound, his head numb, realized that his wife was dead. He believes that he is still alive because of his older daughter and son-in-law arriving at the house to watch an Indians game.
"You guys shouldn’t come in," he heard Daniel tell the couple outside. "Mom and Dad had a big argument."
Like some cue from a horror movie, Heidi and Andrew both said that they heard moans coming from inside the house, perhaps even calling out their names. After bursting into the house and investigating, they found the wounded father and dead mother. In response, Daniel picked up the gun, poised to kill, however Andrew managed to seize the weapon from the boy before any additional slayings occurred. Daniel fled in the family van, but was captured by police shortly thereafter, Halo 3 sitting in the front seat like some possessed Book of the Dead.
Now on trial, Daniel faces charges of murder and attempted murder. He is being tried without a jury before Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge. Daniel’s lawyer commented that the boy was under heavy stress at the time of the incident, as a snowboarding accident left the teen with a severe staph infection. The accident also caused severe spinal damage, and the slightest injury could leave him paralyzed as a result (but he can climb out a window and hike all the way to a retail store to purchase Halo 3). Daniel became familiar with the Halo franchise while recuperating for a year, lying around watching television and playing games. His parents eventually banned games like Halo 3, saying that they are too violent.
Lawyers prosecuting the case do not wish to seek the death penalty, and surprisingly enough, the boy’s family wants him home. In the year Daniel has been in custody, both father and son have mended bridges, and the family actually wants Daniel to come back home.
"You’re my son," Mark Petric said after Daniel apologized for what he had done. "You’re my boy."
-
Previous News Article
PSP 2 Dreams Can Come True -
Next News Article
Report: Sneak Peek at the Next...
Well I am glad that the kid realizes he was wrong an apologized. But this certainly isn't going to end well for anyone. I wonder if the kid was 17 when he bought the game. If he had been playing it for close to a year it could have breached the rules of the ESRB. Still I hope this doesn't cause a media uproar.
lol, great pic to go with the article.
Where do u guys find this stuff?
This is exactly the reason you need to beat your kids, you gotta start early so they don't get all fucked up later and turns on you. They'll thank you for it when they're adults. I know I am.
sounds to me this was a problem of religion more then violent video games. trap an animal in the corner away from something it wants, it is going to turn violent. This was a grown person that turned to violence over something that was forbidden. Why was it forbidden? I think this is actually a case for violent video games then against it. This shows that anyone from any walk of life is deprived of something they desire they will seek it out at any cost. In his eyes this was probably the only way out of his parents life. This should be a lesson to all parents everywhere!
one f*cked up kid
Its either he has major issues
or the parents gave him / allowed him to aquire these issues
no other choices
Very Sad imo especially when someone dies for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON
taking a game away is absolutely no reason
maybe if you or someone else is in mortal danger... but that wasn't the case
This sounds like a case of a child with something wrong in the head paired with bad parenting. If the child doesn't have anything wrong in the head, the shame of killing his mother over pixils will drive him nuts. I don't feel sorry for the child. I can't wait to hear the politicians talk about how awful gaming is, not.
Blaming video games is just an excuse on the part of the media and the kid. This could just have easily been they took away X favorite object and unruly kid went on rampage.
This is situation is created by the parents and their way of bringing up a teenager in a fanatic religions way. Drove him crazy in the end. Simple as that.
I love the fact that when the child is a pastors kid they blame everything else except the way the kid was raised. You can only be wound so tight before you break. This is a sad situation but should be a lesson to all.
Atta boy!
Olle, that was one of the stupidest remarks you could have made.
People like that need to die. No use in wasting money and earthly resources on them.
Sickening. And I find it disturbing that his dad wants him home after he attempted to kill him and killed his mother, cold-blooded, while telling them he had a "surprise" for them.
Knowing what little I know about this case, I'd chalk it up to bad parenting. All things in moderation, the dad shouldn't have taken the game away completely. Also, the dad should have tried to be involved with the kid. He should have played Halo with him, then they could have gone a watched the Indians game together. Happy family.
I'm actually looking forward to my son getting to the age where I will allow him to play violent video games, so I can blow his virtual head off! (God I hope I still have the dexterity to do that.)
Halo 3?
Really? I have him put to death for not playing TF2.
Give me an effing break. How many douches posting here are now blaming religion as the cause of this psychopath. How many Amish kids kill their parents? How many Mormon kids kill their parents? How many Catholic kids kill their parents?
Now let's put this another way. All you worthless turds out there criticizing religion solely because it's Christianity and not Islam, how many of you turds think muslims are terrorists because of islam (because they really and truly are)? I just love how lefty twerps love to criticize the one incident when an abortion clinic got bombed and the one incident where some psycho kid went nuts whereas they turn a complete blind eye to muslim riots in France, 250 people killed in Bombay, 70 killed in London, 250 killed in Madrid, 4000 killed in NY and Washington, etc. etc. etc.
I hope the kid realizes it wasn't worth it. For Grand Theft Auto IV, though, it probably would have been.
The problem was the gun. Why the hell was a 9mm in a family home? This is a great reason to outlaw guns.
God forbid that parents set limits and rules for their kids. That's gonna turn them into mass murderers. Deny that kid a Maserati for his birthday - he's gonna go nuts! Deny him his favorite dessert as punishment, oh no, that's grounds for killin'. You can tell that half of these posters are adolescent fools who have no perspective and think their parents su ck cause they set limits. Do us a favor, don't ever have kids if you're going to let them run wild and free. Cause that's exactly what's going on in London and they've got a big problem with street crime at night. Bands of these yobs/teens with knives are running wild intimidating adults and authority figures. What they need is a good old- fashioned @ss handling by the cops.
While I don't approve guns in the first place, it seems this one was "locked" in the master's bedroom. How the kid managed to get it is another question. Ironicaly, if the game was locked but the gun was elsewhere, even an unlocked area, this situation might have never occured.
On the other hand, if the kid is really f*cked up, it would have happened some other time in some other way.
First of all, the 'kid' was 17. If someone of that age is that susceptible of violence, there is something wrong with them. In which case, I still blame the parents. The point being, if you knew your kid was this susceptible to the media, you should have them under lock and key.
I think people are commenting on the whole forbidden fruit idea. For example, when I was young I remember watching all sorts of violent movies (I remember watching Blade when I was 10), and as I got older, I didn't really find gore or violence all that interesting, mostly because it wasn't forbidden from me.
My younger cousin, on the other hand, is rather obsessed with violence. His mother is rather over protective, and attempts to shield him from the horrors of the world. As such, he spends most of his time online playing horribly gorey flash games.
The point being, his father was probably a strict asshole to him about violence. And because he couldn't have it, a mediocre game with some violence probably got him all stiff in the pants.
The fact of the matter is, the kid wasn't raised with the maturity to deal with violence, because his parents never wanted to deal with the issue in a direct or mature manner. So the kid went off without any guidance on the issue, and this is what happens.
If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
That's just ridiculous. Do you know anything about religion?
You'd gain a lot more ground by saying, "I've played violent video games for years, and never even had the urge to become violent toward real people."
There's more likelihood that this was a parenting issue, than a religion issue. If this kid felt so "cornered" as you'd suggest, he probably wasn't taught properly by his parents to deal with the consequences of his actions. He wasn't taught against real life violence, and that life is to be respected.
Regardless, this is a very sad story. This kid obviously has some psychological issues that need to be resolved if he's willing to kill his parents over a simple video game. There's some unhealthy addiction going on there, which would point out to us there's something else going on in his life that forces him to seek a life within Halo 3 rather than real life.
So you're blaming the kids? Where would they learn such behaviors?
If children learned from a young age that media violence is fantasy, and inappropriate in reality, we wouldn't be having this issue. But rather than letting kids see early on that gore and violence isn't all that interesting in and of itself, parents decide to try to close their children off from something that inevitable.
Instill your children with some common sense, and some knowledge about reality, and we won't have these issues.
So you think police should beat up children?
They need to be locked up and rehabilitated.
Even though I am an atheist, I find the criticism against religion misguided and misplaced. It is not "as simple as that" to blame religion - in fact, it is no better or worse than to blame violent video games.
Also, without greater information, I find it a bit premature to blame this even on bad parenting. There is nothing bad about a parent restricting violent video games, nor is it unreasonable. Furthermore, no other information was given on their parenting style. (Of course, if any of the posters are friends of the family and have greater insight, I hope you will post why you found them to be bad parents.)
I find it interesting that the "kid" (I use that loosely as I do not consider a 17 year old a kid - by that age, one should have a fair degree of maturity... of course, in the USA we absolve anyone of any responsibility until they are at least 18, keeping them mentally immature through most of their adult life) recently had a severe injury. Is it possible that his snowboard injury had resulted in undetected neurological damage which changed his personality or impaired his moral judgment?
What I find most sad is that most posters seem to feel it is a minor's right to have access to whatever form of entertainment they want. While most people think of government aid when talking about US citizen's "sense of entitlement", this belief that a minor is entitled to buy and play whatever games they want captures the greater "sense of entitlement" within our society.
As I posted earlier in the thread
Its either
A. He had something up in his head
B. Parents were abusive or HIGHLY/overly protective
C. Parents were overly protective but were good parents... but were negligent and didn't stop him from aquiring these issues from the media/ also messed up friends
It all comes down to that some aspect of the parenting
Or some imbalance in the kid
As simple as that
If it was an imbalance no one is to blame
If it was the parents... yeah they can be blamed... but theres still kinda like a... "wtf? Why would you wanna shoot someone factor" unless of course he was being abused, which, by the sounds of it wasn't the case
haha, I love how the minister/anti-violence-father owns a pistol. And "hey, hears an idea honey! I'm going to hide our son's game right next to our gun. I'm sure that even though he already went sneaking behind our backs to get this horrid game, he won't try it again and accidentally come across our gun."
oh, and why is this just being reported now, 1 year later?
Child, parents, blame? This is just symptomatic of a larger disease...
Kid shoots parents over Halo, store employee gets trampled to death opening the store for over-zealous shoppers...someone wake me when its over.
And the prosecution would like to call Master Chief to the stand...
the kid needs to be locked away in a psych ward. he clearly has self control issue. stop looking for fault at religion, parenting or the game.
lots of other kids gets restricted, punished and maybe even beaten but they dont end up killing their parents. if his parents were so bad he couldve called social services, lived with other family, etc. he didnt even realise by pulling that trigger that he has no future left.
Clearly someone who is capable of doing such a act has mental problems. Videogames are certainly not the blame here and I bet the kid had violent acts before this just not as severe. This could have all been avoided if he was given the proper help and its no surprise that he comes from a religious family and didn't receive the help he needed.
I don't remember anyone stating that, would you mind pointing out where anyone said minors should be able to see any form of entertainment?
lots of other kids gets restricted, punished and maybe even beaten but they dont end up killing their parents.
And some do, and some kill other people. Unless it was the injury that cause mental damage, or some sort of mental illness that was somehow dormant, it's the parents fault. Children raised with an understanding of what is fantasy and what is reality don't kill their parents without good reason.
You having no idea what you're talking about. It's rare that an abused child will call child services, or want to call child services for that matter. They believe to be dependant on their abuser.
I've spent alot of time in the church (I'm a part time youth pastor), and I know the time being a full time minister will take away from a mans family. I feel like the guy's (I say guy because at 17 he's old enough to make almost all of his own decisions) father may have been holding on to his religious principals too tightly, instead of understanding the situations at hand with his son. I've learned with certainty that if a parent tries hard to unreasonably keep their child away from something that almost everyone else has, there is going to be HUGE struggles over it. In this case, the struggle ended with a hidden gun and a child who's problems had flown under the radar up until this happened. I sympathize with this guy's dad, but it is an obvious case of negligence on an entire family's part.
PS:What the heck does having a gun have to do with anti-violence? I'm certainly anti-violence, but that doesnt stop me from having a brown belt (Trying to find time to finish my studies) in juijitsu. There's a huge difference from violence, and protecting yourself from violence. (If you want proof, look up case info on the time Washington DC attempted to ban hand guns.)