Parenting Boy Kills Parents Over Halo Three- The Daniel Petric Story
Written by Michelle Buss
How being prevented from playing a video game drove a sixteen year old to kill his parents.
What makes a 16 year old boy kill his parents? It would seem in this case video game addiction or is it really a case of a boy losing his temper because he could not get his own way? With dire consequences.What makes a 16 year old boy kill his parents? It would seem in this case video game addiction or is it really a case of a boy losing his temper because he could not get his own way? With dire consequences.
Some of you may be unfamiliar with this case so here is a brief outline. Daniel Petric was raised in a religious family in Ohio. His father was a religious minister and by all accounts pretty careful ( some may even say a bit over cautious) about the kinds of entertainment his children were exposed to.
Daniel was involved in an accident the year he turned 16 and was confined to the house for months on end, during this period he apparently played a lot of games and watched a lot of TV, as you would, no surprise there. There was no suggestion of head injuries from this accident, it was a damaged leg which led to a staph infection.
The trouble started when Daniel’s father, Mark, decided that the Halo series of games that Daniel was particularly fond of were too sexually graphic. Daniel was barred by his father from playing Halo 3 at home, he used to go to a friends house and play the game for up to eight hours straight. Things went very wrong one night when Mark Petric caught his son trying to sneak a copy of the title into the house. Mark took the game from Daniel and locked it in the box he used to keep his handgun safe.Unfortunately Daniel apparently knew where the key was and retrieved the game and the gun. He took the gun into the room his parents were sitting in and told them, chillingly, to close their eyes because he had a surprise for them, then he shot them both. His mother was killed and his father suffered a severe head injury. There is something even more heartbreaking about the way Mark Petric testified that he closed his eyes expecting a nice surprise from his son only to feel his head go numb from the bullet he had been shot with.
Daniel was recently convicted of this crime after the court rejected his plea of insanity.
There is much conjecture over why Daniel would do such a thing. The judge seemed to think too long in the fantasy world of Halo 3 had warped his mind. He seems to suggest that because the aliens you shoot at in the game always come back to be shot again, Daniel was unaware that his parents would be dead forever.
Predictably these comment have caused huge outcry in the gaming world. The general gist of these is that it stretches creditability to suggest that a sixteen year old boy had such a poor understanding of the concept of death. Especially since two court experts had ruled that Daniel did not have a disease or defect of the mind.
So what made him do it? No one seems to know. He clearly comes from a family that loves him and maybe that is the most disturbing aspect of this case. His grandfather has said about Daniel “He has been a loving boy all his life”. He was not a stupid person either maintaining a very middle of the road grade point average at school.
His family say that Daniel has been forgiven by them and God. In court Mark Petric looked at Daniel and said “You are my son, my boy”. It must have been a heartbreaking picture.
Daniel Petric will be sentenced next month.
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