Police Kill Alleged PS3 Thief & His Dog
Police have killed a young man suspected of having stolen two PlayStation 3 consoles from a University of North Carolina-Wilmington student with the assistance of another student from
UNC-Wilmington. The suspect, 18 year old Peyton Strickland & student at Cape Fear Community College, was at home (which he shared with three roomates) when the police, assisted by university officers, came to serve a warrant on him.
The police officers proceeded to bust down the door and Strickland, unnarmed and possibly holding a game controller, according to a roomate, was then shot to death along with his German shepherd.
The victim of the robbery had been waiting three days at a Wal-Mart to purchase 2 premium models of the PS3. When he arrived at his on-campus apartment, he was beaten by one man while another took possession of the consoles.
Strickland’s alleged accomplice was served with a warrant at his residence and was released on bail, Saturday. The State Bureau of Investigation has placed the officers involved on paid leave, apparently standard procedure when there is weapons fire, and will investigate the incident.
What are your thoughts on this?
Suspect in PlayStation 3 Robbery Killed [NOLA.com – Times Picayune, New Orleans]
Super Timsy
Posted to Video Games on 4 December 2006
· Comments (20)
Other stuff like this: crime, madness, PlayStation 3, police brutality, sony
There are no comments possible on this. Police should know better, they are officers of the law, not cowboys and life is NOT a movie.
T
im just so lost why they would shoot him for stealing a PS3, i mean, its still just a game console in the end
I guess if he got caught by surprise and ended up holding the Sixaxis in his right hand, it might have looked like a gun in low lighting.
More than (for example) a wallet would have, anyway. Maybe cops need Wiis with special customized versions of Hogan’s Alley so they can learn to tell the difference between “a gun” and “any dark or metallic inanimate object held in one hand”.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate.
We didn’t exactly lose a shining example of a productive member of society here.
Did the cops over-react? Hell yeah. They were retarded, and should be prosecuted. But I feel no pity for someone who would beat the crap out of a guy just to get a PS3, either.
It doesn’t matter what the guy did. Chalking it up to ‘social worth’ and vigilante justice is the wrong way to approach it, any way you try to skew it.
Wow, how crazier can things get?
Good call on the Wii idea, Raindog!
The dude was 18 (and quite hot), and I doubt any one of us would have been “a productive member of society” at that age. He was studying welding, and in a decade might have been the only person in town capable of fixing your carburetor—in which case he would have been your hero.
“But I feel no pity for someone who would beat the crap out of a guy just to get a PS3, either.”
That’s absolutely disgusting.. granted the man has done wrong – but he does not deserve to die for it!
I’ll go out on a limb here and assume you support Capital Punishment and Zero Tolerance. Good on you – because we’ve all seen how well that works!
holy fucking shit.
Jim, where are the pics?
Oh, and yeah, as terrible as it was of him to steal, that doesn’t justify murder. Then again, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say what exactly happened in that lil’ love shack. I wonder what the guy who was robbed thinks of this.
How they hell did they end up shooting the shep? Did he try to take a bullet for his master?
Jeeeeezus.
Y’know, maybe we shouldn’t cast any judgment in either direction until we know some more facts? Details are way too sketchy for us to be criticizing anyone right now.
where did you people learn to read?
the police didn’t shoot him for stealing a ps3…they went to his apartment to serve him a warrant for stealing a ps3 and then shots were fired in an altercation/misunderstanding. we don’t know what happened in that apartment…there’s nothing said about that…but if you think the cops busted his door down to blow a cap in his head for stealing a game console you’re delusional.
sucks to get shot by the cops…but sucks to beat the shit out of someone and steal over a grand of their property. the guy was an idiot.
UPDATE
On Friday night, Rhoton said he and Strickland played a PlayStation video game while taking a break from cleaning the house they had moved into in August. Their other two roommates weren’t home.
They were playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour when they heard a knock on the door.
Strickland, who sat on a couch closest to the front door, got up to answer, Rhoton said.
As Strickland approached the door, law enforcement officials knocked it down and “there was a bunch of yelling,” he said.
“Four or five shots went off and they killed him,” he said. “They pinned me down to the ground and told me not to move anything.”
Within seconds, Strickland lay on the floor moaning while officers held a gun to Rhoton’s head as he lay on the floor.
He said they mentioned something about a search warrant, but they did not provide a copy.
“They never said why they were here, even when I left last night,” said Rhoton, who attended Jordan High School with Strickland in Durham.
Source:
http://starnewsonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061203/NEWS/612030440
Why do people think that police don’t power trip? That guy at the UCLA library was an asshole, but no cop in the USA had the right to tazer him five times and then tell him to “get up”, while threatening to taze bystanders.
You put people in a position of power, some of them go corrupt. Some of them think they’re above the law, and that’s far from reality.
Poor dog.
Yes, I feel sorry for the dog. Dumb cops shooting a dog…
This is ridiculous. I hope Sony knows what they do when they try to rush a product like this. More than once have I heard of robberies of the PS3.
All that for BLU-ray too. What a shame.
It’s standard procedure for cops to immediately shoot a dog in any altercation, even a speeding ticket. A cop may be BITTEN for crying out loud!
People become cops to go on power trips. Fact of life.