Mortal Kombat Cited As Motivation In Murder Case
Two Colorado teenagers have been accused of killing a seven-year-old girl, and the press is saying the murder came about when the duo were imitating moves from Mortal Kombat. Exactly how this link has been made is a little unclear; the most reported on this connection comes from a statement that the connection was made in court documents. Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were babysitting Trujillo's younger sister, Zoe, while her mother was at work when they began wrestling with the girl.
The two teens reportedly hit, kicked and body-slammed the girl causing “a broken wrist, more than 20 bruises, swelling of the brain, and bleeding in her neck muscles and under her spine”, the affidavits have said. Prosecutors are claiming the teens were imitating “wrestling moves” found in the Mortal Kombat video game. The 17 year old Roberts claimed he was downstairs at the time, drunk and playing video games but witnesses have told otherwise.
This isn't the first time in which a video game has been cited as inspiring a murder technique, as Manhunt was accused of inspiring the murder of Stefan pakeerah. It didn't work then, and it probably won't work this time, either, since the defendants claim to have been drunk at the time of the beating and were purportedly wrestling with the girl instead of using Shaolin moves and fireballs, but you know that the gaming industry is going to take yet another beating in the press once word of this spreads.
This whole story is, for lack of a better word, sickening. Personally, I'm overwhelmed by both sadness for the victim's family and disgust for Trujillo and Roberts; there is no excuse for their heinous crime, and what they did is completely unforgivable.
2 US teens accused of killing 7-year-old girl by using 'Mortal Kombat' moves [PR Inside]
Teens charged in 7-year-old sister's 'Mortal Kombat' death [Rocky Mountain News via GamePolitics]
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to Miscellany on 20 December 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: colorado, mortal kombat, murder, murder charges, teenagers
*Looks at her watch, waiting for Jack Thompson to chime in*
Blaming video games is the new "twinkie defense" being used by prosecutors. Twinkies aren't going away and neither are video games, and I have the expanding waistline to prove it.
The thing that really disgusts me about how media are covering it is that they don't even MENTION that the teens were drunk except for once when they quote the boy. They're far more interested in grabbing eyeballs by throwing "MORTAL KOMBAT!" into the headlines.