Ex-soldier puts his girlfriends 8 year old kid into coma for accidently deleting his GTA save file.

[Mechsoap]

I like the fact that the article mentions the game is ''ultra-violent''.

But nevertheless this is very tragic, very very tragic. And 75 years seems fitting.

 

[quantumsoul]

Video games are more mainstream now. This boosts the number of potential scumbags playing them.

Same thing happened with comics. Longtime ago a psychologist interviewed young men in prison and found all of them read comics. But he never interviewed people out of prison thus never realizing everyone read comics! Completely nullifying his point.

 

[Penguinness]

I wonder if he became a soldier because his name was Rocky.

I can see why it only took 30 mins to come to that conclusion, there was a lot of investigation, both him and the mother lieing and changing their stories, and the kid finally waking up and saying what happened. Being that the incident happened in August 2009, they probably couldn't wait to send that guy down.

What sickens me is the mother not defending her own child. The article makes no mention that the mother is going to be punished for this, but unless the article is wrong regarding the mother part (which it probably is), she should also be punished.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Dude's name was Rocky?

 

[Cowabungaa]

Oh I see now. It is because of one adjective that the article is anti gaming even though there is way more emphasis on him being an ex-soldier than GTA or video games. Got it. Nope no hypersensitivity here.

Hooo take it easy there. All I'm saying is that one simple little word can have quite a big effect, you'd really be surprised. But you never caught me raising the pitchforks against this man or the newspaper now did you?

 

[Protomega]

It seems to me that the only time they had thought a story to be true on how the child came into a coma was when the ex-soldier had beat him, the story makes it sound the investigators heard "He was wrestling with his brothers" and said "Nope, not possible." but as soon as someone said "That older man hit me" they were all over it.

I realize that the boy was the one who gave these claims but it just seems skeptical to me that the blame was so easily given (At least from what the article says).

 

[WinkyTheGreat]

PTSD?

Didn't read the article but that's the impression I get from the "ex-soldier" part.

That's not even close to what happens when someone has PTSD...

Here are the results of PTSD. Note the lack of "snapping" as a result. Sounds to me like the guy was just a dick to begin with.

EDIT: Forgot the link. Whoops
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/what-are-the-symptoms-of-ptsd.shtml

 

[Jackle_666]

Videogames didn't cause this. Living in an environment where violence is glamorised to the point of deifying (like, for example, the army) has obviously nurtured his irrational tendency to solve problems with brute force.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Are you kidding? I love re-playing that game, so what if he lost his data, video games are meant to be played more than once! I say they tear out his organs and give them to the kid.
He even looks like the sterotypical bad boyfriend!
This enrages me, I'm serious, if he has so much time in jail, give his organs to the kid. That's justice.....rrrrrr I am just so angry right now. Instead of punching a kid, I think I will use video games to cool off, as they deter violence by offering a healthy alternitive where nobody gets hurt.

He would have to be donor-able. You can't just pull the organs out of any random animal and stick them into another animal.

Besides, this guy is full grown and the kid is 8. I'm 99.96% sure that his organs would be much too big...and that his kidneys are shot from all the alcohol I'm sure he drinks. You get tax free booze in the army, after all.

Edit: PTSD doesn't lead to things like this. The symptoms of PTSD are depression and crappy memory. Not homicidal rampages.

 

[Comrade_Beric]

Now, news articles like this put a bad reputation on gamers, and the developers of such games.

And the people in the article themselves, for that matter. Media thrives on making innocent situations bad and bad situations worse. I'm not saying this ass doesn't deserve what he gets, but I tend to hold back my judgement on such things because media outlets love to exaggerate everything, especially anything bad that will fetch viewers... like all of us here in the forums who clicked the link just to see what you were talking about. The more they exaggerate, the more clicks they get, and thus the more advertising money they make, which is all that matters anymore.

 

[C95J]

I can see the headlines already...

It's kinda hard to believe that some people will think this is purely because of the video game, not the fact that he is also an ex-soldier, so his mental health might not be the most stable, and the fact that he is definitely no stranger to violence.

But really, who would actually do that to a kid? Must be messed up in the head.

 

[DanielDeFig]

I feel sick, and as always the problem stems from somewhere else and has nothing to do with videogames.

Good News: The article only briefly mentions the game once, and instead concentrates on the atrocities the man did to the child.

Bad News: The author clearly found it necessary to refer to GTA as an 'ultra-violent' videogame.

 

[guntotingtomcat]

PTSD, guys.
A massive problem that most western armies, USA in particular, fail to address properly.

Mind you, it didn't tell us that he'd actually been to a warzone. Quite a lot of detail on the video game, though.

One wonders if there's any bias in this article.

The video game is most likely irrelevant. There has to be other factors that made him stand on a child.

And why are we being so harsh on the mother for lying. If the guy can beat a child, I bet he has no problems wife beating/threatening.

 

[Penguinness]

I realize that the boy was the one who gave these claims but it just seems skeptical to me that the blame was so easily given (At least from what the article says).

I guess it must be that the guy and the boys mother initially said that the kid fell off his bed, which was revealed as an absolute lie. I guess if there's only 3 people who knows what happened, and 2 of them are revealed as lieing to avoid the guy getting prison time, then the only thing that's left to do is to take the word of the victim. I think if it came down to someone who has been lieing being imprisoned, and a victim getting no justice, they'd go with the first option. It might be true that they'd prefer to have wrongful justice than no justice at all?

 

[Sneeze]

Edit: Disregard that, just re-read and realised it happened in America when there's proper jail sentences being handed out.

 

[Protomega]

One also wonders if there is actually a bias article in the first place or if we just read into it too much. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here to just make sure that we do get the point across that we truly do not know what exactly happened.

By the way when I saw the title I thought the kid went into a coma because they guy and deleted the kids GTA save file.

 

[gl1koz3]

One of the reasons 8 year olds should not be playing games like GTA. Give him Mario or something else that doesn't seem like he's been sucked into the Matrix and that severing the link will kill him...