Grand Theft Auto makers sued over teenage killing

[X-Reaper]

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...p?story=444521

Those teens are morons. Also those damn lawyers have nothing better to do.:rolleyes:

What's your views on this?

18 September 2003
The makers of the bestselling video game Grand Theft Auto are being sued for more than £60m after two teenagers said they were copying its violent scenes when they killed a man.

The court case could help to decide the debate over whether violent video and computer games cause aggression in children. Grand Theft Auto and its three sequels are designed in Britain and have topped the UK and US games charts, selling more than 20 million copies in the past five years. The player acts the role of a street thug with 40 different weapons.

Points, ammunition and more weapons are awarded for completing missions that include stealing cars, crashing them, shooting pedestrians and other motorists, drug dealing and beating up prostitutes. The fourth in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, quickly became the bestselling video game in history when it was launched last year, with 250,000 copies sold in the first two days.

The $100m legal action involves Joshua Buckner, 14, and his stepbrother William, 16, from Newport, Tennessee, who shot dead Aaron Hamel, 45, and seriously injured Kimberly Bede, 19, on 25 June.

The two boys told police they shot at vehicles on a highway near their home with a .22 rifle in an attempt to recreate images from Grand Theft Auto. Mr Hamel, a nurse, was killed while driving home to Knoxville, Tennessee. Miss Bede, who was travelling in another car with her boyfriend, was seriously injured and has eight fragments of shrapnel in her pelvis.

The Buckner brothers had no criminal record or any history of trouble-making. In court last month, they pleaded guilty to reckless homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment. They were sentenced to indefinite detention. District Attorney General Al Schmutzer told the court: "They said they got the idea from a video game called Grand Theft Auto and that they were bored, that they went out and began shooting."

In a letter to victims and their families, Joshua said: "I did not mean to hurt anyone. I hate that it happened. This will stick with me for the rest of my life."

Miss Bede and the family of Aaron Hamel plan to sue Take-Two Interactive Software, which publishes Grand Theft Auto, for liability in a wrongful death lawsuit. Take-Two owns Rockstar Games, which is based in Edinburgh and designed the first version of the game in 1997. Sony will also be named in the lawsuit, because Grand Theft Auto was made exclusively for its Play- Station consoles. Sony declined to comment on the case.

Jack Thompson, the lawyer representing the families, said the court case could be the first to rule on whether watching and playing violent video games caused excess aggression in children. He said: "We are going to show that this game did influence these boys and cause them to go out and shoot at these people.

"There has been a wealth of research to show that children's brains process these video games in a different way from adults'. They cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality, so they play these games and then think if they do the same thing in reality, it's OK, there will be no consequences."
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