The trial of young Daniel Petric who killed his mother ended yesterday, with the boy being found guilty. After a brief review, here are three things I think are safe to conclude about this tragedy.
Judge James Burge is an idiot. “It’s my firm belief as a human being, and not as a jurist, that Daniel does suffer from a serious defect of the mind” … no shit judge. We could get all deep and objective on what ‘normal’ is, but I think we can agree that a 16 year old kid who kills his mother, attempts to kill his father, and had a plan laid out to make it seem as though the father pulled a murder-suicide, is not all good in the head. The great Judge Burge also compares the effects of video games to the pleasurable sensations caused in the brain by drugs such as heroin and crack. Enjoy that actual photo of the Judge to the right and this other great quote from the man:
“(In Halo 3) you can shoot these aliens, and they’re there again the next day. You have to shoot them again, and I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea, at the time he hatched this plot, that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever“
Mark Petric is a Reverend and was the owner of the 9mm semiautomatic handgun that killed his wife. I have nothing to add to this other than people who defend the Reverend say, “dude he lives in Elyria, we all need guns.” Yeah, that makes it all good with God.
It’s also noteworthy that the father, a week before the murder, had kicked Daniel out of the house after a fight and also makes claims that he had a great relationship with his son. All I know from recent past events, kicking your child out of the house leads to nothing good.
Daniel Petric, 16 years old, was mentally ill, but not insane. Out of all people, I feel sorry for the mother Sue who has passed on, and for Daniel. Unlike his father, I cannot say that I would forgive him, the actions have been done and the kid now needs to serve his time (possible life sentence without parole). However, the news has already started printing quotes from the idiot Judge and now the focus is wrongly going to be put on video games rather than help prevent situations like this from happening.
No one has all the answers, but some things are obvious. Having a better relationship with your child can help you find if they are not mentally stable. Clues are present within the actions of a child to tell if they are heading down the path of becoming a sociopath. Not to sound completely cheesy here, but seek help from others if you are unsure about the stability with someone close to you, child, friend, or otherwise.
You read my mind. This is a wonderfully dead-on article.
Halo 3 has sold somewhere over 10 million copies and 1 moron shot his parents and his legal defense blamed it on the game. So here’s the logic (or lack thereof):
Odds of killing someone because you bought Halo 3 = 1:10,000,000
VS
Odds of killing someone with a car you bought = 1:164
Hmm…well at least nobody dies when I’m playing Gran Turismo.
Because of his actions, the whole family has been ripped apart and destroyed. In reality, the teenager didn’t know what would happen and was totally caught up with the game world. I admit, I play Halo 3 and I find it really good, but making a decision to kill your parents because of it, is absurd and it makes me think that he was already playing games too much.
We should actually show a little sympathy for the guy because living with the burden and guilt of actually killing your mother is terrible especially when you come to see that your mother had loved and cared for you all your life.
Nevertheless, he deserved the punishment, as no one should act on outrage and anger.
I know that this is an old article and I don’t have anything new to say, but I’m still going to say what I feel.
I heard about this in the local news before it made national news. I live about fifteen minutes from Elyria and my friend’s mom has actually met one of Daniel’s relatives. But that doesn’t change the fact that my first thought when I heard this was “It’s going to be a national story within a month and now people are going to think Halo is the new GTA. People are real idiots about this kind of thing, and I love the assumption that I’m going to kill someone because not only do I play Halo, but I enjoy firearms.
People like Burge should only exist on Fox News. Leave your half-truth, twisted conservative logic away from the rest of us next time. Kthxbai
I’m actually surprised though that Halo isn’t being seen that badly. I mean, in Northeast Ohio parents were freaked out for a few weeks. I was the same age as Daniel and when my mom heard about it, she was instantly concerned with the content of the game and demanded to know if this was one of the ones I liked to play. (amusing part is, I don’t own an XBox/XBox 360 and mostly play at the local CHURCH) but the “Omigod, Halo is bad” thing died out before this story was famous in other parts of the country.
Still, I agree with you that the judge is dumb. But I’m glad this kid is serving a long sentence for what he did. I feel for his family, especially his dad. Say what you want about that man-and you may be right-but kids get kicked out all the time and sometimes the parents have good reason for it. As for him saying they had a good relationship, I think it was a context thing where he meant “good enough that I never would have expected something like that”.
And his parents were keeping Halo from him and didn’t know he had a copy of the game. When they found out they took it away. Chances are, they knew the kid wasn’t right in the head.