Crimes That Happened Because of Video Games

Video games are often used as a scapegoat by many people as the reason why others commit violent crimes. While yes, there have been studies that linked aggressions and video games but as we all know “correlation does not equal causation,” meaning that people who commit these acts of violence were already prone to violence for other unrelated reasons. Now decide for yourself whether video games were truly responsible for others getting hurt as seen in these five separate incidents down below.\r \r 1. Julien Barreaux\r \r Most people are able to process that a game is well, just that. But that didn’t matter to 20-year-old Julien Barreaux who wanted to see his rival swim with the fishes for taking him out  in a video game. So over the following seven months, he painstakingly tracked down the other gamer, Mikhael, called his home, rang the door, then jabbed the poor guy out of revenge. Luckily the knife missed Mikhael’s heart by just an inch and he survived. As for Barreaux, he was arrested within an hour.\r \r 2. Crystian Rivera\r \r While his parents were out at work, 13-year-old Oklahoma native, Crystian Rivera, was left in charge of his 9-month-old sister. He just so happened to be playing Call of Duty: Black Ops when his sister began crying from a fall. It distracted Crystian and caused him to die in the game. Out of anger, he violently shook his sister then put her back to bed and returned to the game. Upon returning home, his poor parents discovered their daughter unresponsive and rushed her to the hospital where she died three days later due to blood clots and a fractured skull.\r \r 3. Raynham Incident\r \r In 2010, two youths, aged 12 and 16 in Raynham, Massachusetts were accused of trying to set fire to a garage and apartment building with none other than homemade Molotov cocktails made of beer bottles and wicks from chair covers. The police were alerted of the boys’ actions by a neighbor and once questioned, revealed that they got the idea from Grand Theft Auto, which they had been playing the previous night. The pair also left behind a slew of graffiti with graphic messages all over the area.\r \r 4. Hu Ange Poisoning\r \r Back in 20017, Hu Ange, a 21-year-old man from China was given $50,000 yuan or $7,353 by his parents as an investment for his seafood business. Unfortunately for them, their son was obsessed with the online video game Legend, and instead squandered the money on it. A few months later, he hatched a plan to get rid of his parents by poisoning them, first with 20 packs of tetramine and when that didn’t work, an additional 45 packs. He later tried to frame his parents’ death as a intentional but the police quickly discovered the truth upon investigating his search history.\r \r 5. Kim Yoo-chul and Choi Mi-sun\r \r At first glance, Kim Yoo-chul and Choi Mi-sun appeared like any other South Korean couple. They met through an online gaming service and later had a daughter who was born prematurely. Unlike most caring parents, this particular couple preferred to care for their virtual baby Anima, rather than the real one. To make matters worse, they only dropped by every 12 hours or so to feed their daughter, then spent the rest of their free time in an internet cafe as both were unemployed. As expected, their real daughter passed away due to neglect, and the pair tried to flee but were instead apprehended by the police.