Teenager Kills Mother Over Halo 3

An Ohio teenager is accused of killing his mother and grievously wounding his father because they refused to let him play Halo 3.

Daniel Petric was 16 at the time of the murder, which took place after his parents told him he wasn't allowed to play Halo 3. The teenager sneaked out of the house and bought the game anyway, but was caught by his parents as he came back in with the game. They took it away from him and put it into a "lockbox" in their closet, where they also kept a 9 mm handgun.

Prosecutors allege Petric took the game and the gun out of the box; concealing the weapon, he approached his parents and said, "Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you."

Petric's father, Mark Petric, testified that he expected a "pleasant surprise," but instead, his head suddenly went numb. The next thing he remembered, he said, was Daniel shoving the gun into his hand saying, "Hey Dad, here's your gun. Take it." Mark Petric survived thanks to the intervention of his daughter and her husband, who had come to the house to watch a baseball game, but his wife, Susan Petric, died of a gunshot wound to the head.

The elder Petric, a minister at the New Life Assembly of God, said his son has apologized for killing his mother, saying, "I'm so sorry for what I did to Mom, to you and to the family. I'm so glad you are alive," and that he could hardly live with the guilt over what he did.

In their opening statement, Daniel Petric's lawyers said the boy had been under a great deal of stress because of a severe staph infection caused by a bad snowboarding accident. As a result, he had been stuck at home for the past year with nothing to do but watch television and play games. Videogames haven't been directly blamed for the shooting at this point in the proceedings, appearing to be just a catalyst for the whole awful affair, but if no other evidence about a troubled home life is forthcoming you can bet that an attempt to establish a more direct connection will be made.

Monitoring your children's videogaming habits is commendable, but the disconnect between taking a violent videogame away from their son and then putting that game into the same box in which they kept their gun - and then not even having the sense to keep it locked - is truly mind-boggling. It's impossible to tell at this early stage, but there's almost certainly more to this story than just a kid who got pissed off over Halo 3. As for the shooter himself, I sincerely hope he receives a punishment commensurate with the enormity of his crime; youthful indiscretion is one thing, but making a conscious decision to execute your parents is something else entirely.

Source: Cleveland.com, via Kotaku

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Sorry news fellas, the community beat you to it again. Contributors - 1000 : Community - 2.

However, some people REALLY need to get out more.

This is just insane. The cold-blooded manner in which the kid acted.

Video games are completely out of the question here. You don't store a gun someplace unlocked and there's definitely more to it than simply an enraged person with no games.

Society just like to choose someone to take the fall.

Sirisaxman:
What a STUPID twat. Halo 3's not even that great of a game. Give 'em the chair, the chair!

Because, of course, it'd have been okay if this had been over his copy of The Orange Box. *eyeroll*

I'm going to reserve my judgement on the whole thing, because what we do know doesn't add up; there has to be something else to this, because otherwise this kid is a well-concealed psycho and those aren't nearly as common as CSI or Criminal Mind would make it seem.

-- Steve

sirdanrhodes:
Sorry news fellas, the community beat you to it again. Contributors - 1000 : Community - 2.

However, some people REALLY need to get out more.

It's mentioned that he couldn't get out due to a severe staph infection which was caused by a snowboarding accident. Thus, he was getting out before he got injured, then his parents rubbed salt in the wounds by saying he couldn't spend his inside time by playing video games...Not that I'm defending him.

9mm hand gun with rage for not allow to play game
Result: death

Let this be a lesson:

1) Store the game in the jewelry box or the securities safe instead.
2) Don't assume your child is incapable of anything.

If I had hated my wife...
...I would have shot the child, wiped the gun, put it back in my son's dead hand, and moved to Mexico with the other two witnesses.

If I loved my wife...
...that son would not be able to reproduce again- though it would have made prison life much easier.

Sirisaxman:
What a STUPID twat. Halo 3's not even that great of a game.

Your opinion, don't treat it like fact.

Theres obviously something more to this story, although I will say this; if the kid is able to sneak out and buy Halo 3, his snowbaording accident is not an excuse.

There is no excuse for killing another human being, particularly your mother.

There is something seriously wrong with any person who would kill due to the frustration of being denied a game.

I feel terrible for the family. I can't imagine what they are feeling right now...

No one kills their parents over one incident. You don't 'go' crazy, you already 'are' crazy. Halo 3 may have been a catalyst, but the real issue here is that teens with disorders aren't receiving psychological care. Maybe it's the parents don't have the tools to judge signs of aggression, or simply that they're too preoccupied with work to take notice of their children's problems.

Again, gaming is a 'whipping boy' for psychotic behavior.

I'm gonna chime in with the 'this can't be everything' line. I'm guessing that, like that unfortunate case about the boy who ran away over Call of Duty 4, this kid developed a somewhat-obsessive like to video games, and, like many other junkie who's drug has been taken away, he did something extreme in order to take it back.

At least, that's my take on it.

wilsonscrazybed:
No one kills their parents over one incident. You don't 'go' crazy, you already 'are' crazy. Halo 3 may have been a catalyst, but the real issue here is that teens with disorders aren't receiving psychological care. Maybe it's the parents don't have the tools to judge signs of aggression, or simply that they're too preoccupied with work to take notice of their children's problems.

Again, gaming is a 'whipping boy' for psychotic behavior.

They did say it was only a catalyst, not the direct cause.

Oh look another psychotic murder that's blamed on video games because people are quick to judge.

If he had done it out of some sort of impulsive motivation without thinking then he wouldn't have said "hey guys close your eyes"

No, he knew exactly what he was doing. Fucking psycho.

wilsonscrazybed:
No one kills their parents over one incident. You don't 'go' crazy, you already 'are' crazy. Halo 3 may have been a catalyst, but the real issue here is that teens with disorders aren't receiving psychological care. Maybe it's the parents don't have the tools to judge signs of aggression, or simply that they're too preoccupied with work to take notice of their children's problems.

Again, gaming is a 'whipping boy' for psychotic behavior.

seconded like a b*tch. I can't believe they could put the headline like that, as if the boy was an upstanding christian missionary, until they said 'no halo' and he gunned them down at the drop of a hat. It is almost as bad as the 'boy runs away from home because parents took away CoD 4, ends up in ditch' story. In that one they said he started skipping school and stealing, as if you would need to steal if CoD 4 was the centre piece of your life.

This crap needs to stop, I say we go V for vendetta stylee on websites like this!

What was the name of those guys who vowed to take down scientology btw?

This boy is the new standard for hardcore gamers. But seriously; killing over an overrated console fps? What a weird kid.

People have killed for a lot less then this...

But the fact it was a game involved...

This happened a year ago? How come we're just hearing about it now during the trail?

I don't know
I could see the kid snapping over too much trauma
I mean he probably loved the sport or something
and with the staph infection he was probably unhappy being stuck in the house
and when his folks didn't let him have what he wanted he went bonkers

*sigh* This is just sad. Just because someone is crazy and they kill someone, and a video game happens to be in the same room with them doesn't mean they've been "tainted by the ultraviolent filth that is modern media". Someday the press needs to remember that there are psychos out there, always have been, and that video games are little more than another thing to snap over. If it wasn't Halo 3, I bet it would've been his snowboard or something like that. But I ramble. Suffice to say that when ninety-five journalists die in part of a serial killing, they can finally correctly blame video games. Just not for the reasons they want to.

Hey parents, don't use games as babysiters!

If your stupid kid has easy access to a firearm I'd say more than one thing was wrong in that family :P

jdnoth:
This boy is the new standard for hardcore gamers. But seriously; killing over an overrated console fps? What a weird kid.

Which game would've made it worthwhile, pray tell?

(And yes, I know I've already posted a similar response; I'm just tired of letting this crap go unchallenged.)

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym:

jdnoth:
This boy is the new standard for hardcore gamers. But seriously; killing over an overrated console fps? What a weird kid.

Which game would've made it worthwhile, pray tell?

(And yes, I know I've already posted a similar response; I'm just tired of letting this crap go unchallenged.)

-- Steve

There is a fine line between challenging the crap and feeding the trolls.

So someone's going to attempt to make us believe that this game- which he bought, but never actually had a chance to play- transformed this sweet, innocent church-going boy into a hardened killer the moment he laid his hands on it?

I'm sorry, the streets in front of every GameStop and EB Games would be littered with bodies if this were even remotely true.

There was obviously something tremendously wrong with this young man well before he snuck out of his house that night. You do not put a handgun to the heads of your parents and pull the trigger just because they won't let you "get your frag on"; there are no small number of simple human instincts that would normally work to stop this. I wouldn't doubt that further investigation would find that this boy had deep-seated psychological problems... but hey, that doesn't sell nearly as many newspapers as "Video Game Turns Choir Boy Into Murderer".

Anton P. Nym:

jdnoth:
This boy is the new standard for hardcore gamers. But seriously; killing over an overrated console fps? What a weird kid.

Which game would've made it worthwhile, pray tell?

(And yes, I know I've already posted a similar response; I'm just tired of letting this crap go unchallenged.)

-- Steve

I second this.
I would also like to say that it probably wasn't just the game that caused him to do this; there were probably many other factors that contributed to him shooting his parents. The video game was merely the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were.

calelogan:
This is just insane. The cold-blooded manner in which the kid acted.

Video games are completely out of the question here. You don't store a gun someplace unlocked and there's definitely more to it than simply an enraged person with no games.

Society just like to choose someone to take the fall.

unless it's someone important i don't think taking the fall would help much

Always sad when things like this happens, and i know its gonna sound really cold hearted, but the saddest thing here is that the gaming industry will take a beating from the media cause of this, and no, im not some over obsessed gamer, im just a normal guy, but the fact is that his behaviour doesnt really have anything to do with gaming, gaming just happened to be the thing that pushed him over the edge, it might as well have been an argument with a friend or some idiot in traffic pissing him off or something, things like this will always happen...sadly, but blaiming the thing that happened to push them over the edge and saying thats the thing thats dangerous is just dumb.

Gaming does not make people violent, thats been prooven over and over again, yet, the mainstream media apparently cant read the reports nor can they research it themselfs.

My heart goes out to the family for this death, but obviously not to the kid.

The kid had to be psychotic if he killed his mother just because of Halo.

Obviously there's something more to this than just getting pissed off at his parents for taking away Halo. You only do this kind of stuff if you're already mentally psychotic.

I'll say it like I always say it, Video Games do affect you in some way, negative or positive. For all we know, Halo 3 could have been the event that tipped him over the edge to kill his mother (hell, we all get angry at our parents, though usually not enough to kill them (just enough to say you want to kill them)). However, it's yet to be proven that video games are the sole reason for this violent behavior from happening, but I'm not denying that it may have some sortof subconcious effect to it.

OK, that's creepy. I've gotten angry with my parents when they forbid me to buy M-rated games, but seriously, that's horrible.

Although the title for the this news story does not reveal everything, the fact of the matter is that it is accurate. I know that we are all gamers and get a little touchy (as we should) when games are unfairly characterize as the harbinger of every death and laziness on earth, but...

There's no mistaken it, he killed his mother due to the halo incident. Yes, this young man was very troubled and there was so much more going on his life than we can possibly know from a simple court statement, but the fact is that halo 3 was the tipping point.

Think of it this way: If this young man (with the same homicidal tendencies) was denied his computer in the same fashion that he was denied Halo 3 (i.e. they locked it up in some room with a 9mm) and then he subsequently broke into that room, reclaimed his computer, and shot his mother we would have to concede that he did this partly based on his parents taking his computer from him.

It's no different here. Just because he probably had a million other sick thoughts in his mind when he killed his parents, it doesn't discount the fact that "Mommy and Daddy took Halo From Me!" was at the forefront of all of them.

Sad.

To do that to the very people who brought you into the world...
This sort of behaviour is why I have no hope for humanity anymore :<

Fragamoo:
To do that to the very people who brought you into the world...
This sort of behaviour is why I have no hope for humanity anymore :<

I know this is a sad and tragic event, but this shouldn't be the reason why you have no hope for humanity anymore. As they say, "Don't Let the Bastards get you down." And this f*cking twat is the Bastard King.

Excuse my asterisk

Well that's sad. But as the trend is in these cases it's seems the kid had some serious problems before he came into contact with a videogame and unfortunately didn't get help early enough.

And what's the point of a lockbox if you don't keep it locked?

Novajam:

And what's the point of a lockbox if you don't keep it locked?

That's a damn good question my friend... It's like setting up a blank password in windows. It may give you outward sense of security, until someone actually tries to use your computer and realizes, oh, what a retard.

Your point, Novajam, is only amplified by the fact that a loaded gun was also present. Yes, a loaded gun and Halo 3 deserve an equal amount security... NONE.

Sad.