Schizophrenic man kills, says GTA told him to do it

But they don't tell you to stab anyone in GTA. They tell you to beat people or shoot people I don't recall any stab commands.

So......When the crazy person who does lots of drugs says the cat told him to kill someone, we should then ban cats? Crazy people, are....well crazy

Who in the hell exactly is trying to ban videogames based on this? Some of you people are too eager to embrace martyrdom. This kid is by all accounts a legitimate schizophrenic and actually believed he was Carl from GTA. The excuse here isn't that it was a game, it's that he was schizophrenic; his illness simply manifested itself through GTA. The article hardly even references the game itself, it spends most of its time focusing on the drug use and psychotic issues of the man involved.

if you wanna pop some shrooms and trip on okami for an afternoon go nutz.

hahaha i did this last month and had a blast!
im sick of the media blaming not only video games but drugs for crazies. i smoke weed everyday and i never wanted to kill anyone. i would take too much effort and id rather play games and eat hot pockets.

Wonderful. This guy is a friggin' loony (which will be overlooked), blames a MURDER on a game (every anti-videogame activist hates) after smoking copious amounts of an illegal hallucinogenic substance (which MIGHT not be overlooked). Forsaking everything else in the process, probably including and not limited to eating and bathing.

Jack Thompson is gonna have a field day, if he hasn't already...

I'll be one of the few that is actually relieved about this article. Finally a newspaper article that makes little mention of the video game being a catalyst and brings his mental health and mental damaging drug to the forefront. Really anyone that dislikes this story is just being a fool since they fail to notice that the game was still a LEGITIMATE part of the news story. It can't be helped that it has to be reported. Not for political reasons, but it's just like any store about schizo's. Someone tells them to do something, and it's very commonly a media outlet. I don't see the article blaming the media outlet, just stating the fact of the combined pieces leading to the murder.

I am bipolar, I have never murdered anyone, and don't blame my actions on video games. It has been shown that doing drugs can actually trigger a mental illness to appear earlier than if the person had the mental illness and it appeared later in life. People 'self medicate' themselves with false ideas that it will fix them, when it actually does the opposite. Schizophrenics do not have a grasp upon reality, and it appears he grabbed on to this strange notion that he was a video game character. This kind of thing happens all of the time, "their watching me", "the government is after me", "I am going to be kidnapped by aliens and get an anal probe". Most of the time they don't hurt anyone, but it does happen.
This person should be punished, however throwing him in jail is the wrong thing to do, I do think that putting him in a psychiatric hospital is where he belongs. He needs help, he is a sick person.

I hate to see those news stories about someone committing a crime that say stuff like, "bipolar man robs bank". The bipolar illness probably had little to do with it, but the images that it instills in people bring it some sort of sick shock value.

I tried to 'self medicate' years ago. Yeah, I did get psychotic, and it didn't help my condition one bit. I take my medicine, and I don't do drugs, I think it is a pretty simple way to make your illness easier to control.

What makes this so strange is that this is my post to this site, after reading these articles for a long time. I just suddenly felt so strongly about this. Thanks for your time.

I tend to be a sceptic when it comes to claims that sound just as stupid as if someone claimed that the evil PS2 with it's evil voodoo magic possessed their body and told them to go on a Grand Theft Auto-type shooting spree. People are just messed up sometimes and people shouldn't over-analyze it just to try to prove a boneheaded point. For the record: video games are not evil, people a just messed up in the head sometimes. And sometimes they are just on drugs. Or most likely both of these things should be condisidered when thugs run around shooting people just like the idiot zombie this guy is.

Oh well this is what the xbox generation is like.

He was a paranoid schizophrenic gangster. Hmmm. Let's try to report this as marijuanna and games made him do it.

pulease. Sadly, I almost miss the days when this would just be because he's black.

Alright, let me clear a few things up:
-Cannabis is not a hallucinogen.
-Cannabis has not been shown to cause schizophrenia, though it can help it to be revealed earlier.
-Cannabis does cause schizophrenic symptoms to appear when people are high (having emotions that do not fit the situation, auditory hallucination).

Skunk cannabis is just a nickname for very potent cannabis. It exists in the US and it is no worse than regular cannabis. In my opinion schizophrenia was the cause of this, not cannabis or GTA. He should be treated and if proven to not be mentally ill then he should be jailed.

Look, people, schizophrenia alone is enough to make a person kill, if the case is bad enough. Trust me, I just studied a unit on this in school and watched a couple of videos on it. Schizophrenia, depending on the extent of it, can make you paranoid that other people are trying to kill you or torture you, even with people that you've known for your whole life, like your parents. Because of this paranoia, the schizophrenic person will sometimes perform a preemptive strike (see: murder) against the person/s trying to "get them." This case holds no water in the "GTA made me do it" department.

People when will you learn that this was NOT caused by the Drugs, I have smoked weed for nearly ten years not stop and i have NEVER wanted to kill anyone, When your mashed you dont care what people do or say cos everything is funny to you, speaking as i am mashed now, im upset to see you acusing it of being the Drugs or the Game, THIS IS NOT THE CASE, i love that game and have spent hours and hours playing it. IT DONT MAKE YOU WANNA KILL PEOPLE, the guy was in his own world, evryone and everything to this poor lad was an enemy, the drugs or the game did not enhance this situation, he did it because he was scared.
So why is it people try to make excuses for this simple fact,
well alot of it is to do with the fact the people need someone or something to blame, and as drugs are ilegal this is the most obvious one to blame.
I am a stonner an this is my message to the world, i nearly couldnt be bothered to type it i was that stonned, lol,


People it ISN'T THE DRUGS AND IT ISN'T THE GAME EITHER.........................

Peace and Love to you GTA Players

Poor thing couldn't help it. You're born with this mental illness it doesn't onset until about his age and reality is distorted unfortunately is out of his control. People with this can take medicine to stay in control, but it's common to have the impairment of not believing you have anything wrong with you because for people with schizophrenia their reality is their reality and drugs doesn't make it any better for this type of person plus without their meds they become more detached from the world, crazier, and more aggressive and violent than usual, I know this from experience my husband is schizo.