Mortal Kombat Wrongfully Accused

Colorado Teens Accused of Killing 7-Year-Old Girl With 'Mortal Kombat' Game Moves

Thursday, December 20, 2007

JOHNSTOWN, Colorado — Two teens have been charged with killing the 7-year-old sister of one of them by beating her with imitations of moves from the "Mortal Kombat" video game, prosecutors said.

Lamar Roberts, 17, and Heather Trujillo, 16, were charged as adults on one count each of felony child abuse causing death, state prosecutor Robert Miller said in court documents released Wednesday and filed a day earlier.

According to a police affidavit, the teens were baby-sitting Trujillo's half-sister, Zoe Garcia, on Dec. 6 while the girl's mother was at work. Zoe lost consciousness and stopped breathing after the teens hit, kicked and body-slammed her, imitating moves used in the video game, the document said...

...The witness told police that Roberts said Zoe had told them to stop wrestling. According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn't stop, he responded, "I don't know; I was drunk."

Source

Let's begin by having a look at the title of this article.
"Colorado Teens Accused of Killing 7-Year-Old Girl With 'Mortal Kombat' Game Moves".
This...is 100% unnecessary.

Why?

Because it could have served the same purpose without ever referencing the video game. All the tragedy-hounds would have gotten their daily fill of death, and we could have gone about our business after adding two more names to the "Gee, Aren't Kids Today Totally F'ed Up" list. But instead, they chose to throw journalistic integrity out the window and take a more sensational, attention grabbing route instead. Now, by villifying Mortal Kombat, it becomes the perceived focus of the article, though it is only mentioned twice in the article, 3 times if you count the title. This is no longer an article about some braindead girl killing her half-sister with the help of her drunken, underage, similarly mentally-handicapped friend.

Now it's an article about how video games will kill your children.

"But they were playing Mortal Kombat, and they beat the child to death! It's applicable!"

Ok, let's take some of today's headlines, and re-imagine them as they might have appeared coming out of the Fox News bullpen.

"Benazir Bhutto killed in Pakistan; Copy of PS2 game 'Hitman' found in suicide bomber's apartment"
"Police: Teen died saving friend from tiger; Seigfried and Roy tickets found on victim"
"New home sales at 12-1/2 year low, while website Second Life posts record numbers"
"Toddler's brain pierced by screwdriver; President Bush pushes for a complete recall"



Now, do any of those headlines REALLY sound improbable? No, they really don't. If you saw them on CNN.com, you'd buy them hook, line, and sinker, because that's what you've been trained to do. And you're paying for it, by allowing the news media to warp your perceptions of the world. This article is trying to tell you that video games make you kill people.

But here's what I get out of it.

Two teens, languishing at home over their winter break, got bored and decided to beat the hell out of a little girl. These children, the unfortunate end product of a disasterous public school system made worse by the Bushmeister's No Child Left Behind march toward illiteracy, very likely would have been raising their own child soon enough, had they not proven themselves unfit members of the human race just prior to a drunken New Year's Eve conception. The teens' parents could not be reached for comment, as their phone numbers were not listed. This is not due to any sort of privacy concerns on their part, they simply used this month's welfare check on cocaine instead of paying the phone bill. Oh, and the 17 year old was apparently drunk at the time, which was only mentioned once (1/3 as many times as Mortal Kombat).

So, who are the villians in this story? According to Fox News, it's Mortal Kombat.
But if you turn your brain on before you read the story, we get a different lineup.

Public schools
The teens' parents
Alcohol
Breakdown of the laws of Natural Selection

Now, how does any of that involve video games? You're right, it doesn't. But is it really safe journalism to print "Under-educated, poorly-raised teens murder young girl while inebriated"? No way. We need a good scapegoat.

Please. Stop blaming it on video games. Let's take some responsibility here. Put the blame where it belongs, and let's try to keep our kids safe, okay?



In other news, Kenneth Copeland is just one of six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

Can anyone else say, "It's about blessed time"?

UPDATE
Thanks to The Brainy Gamer, I now have some information to back up my (formerly) fictional statements about the way these kids were living. What follows was found on the Brainy Gamer blog:

Court records show a history of neglect and abuse charges against Dana Trujillo, Zoe Garcia's mother, in both Colorado and New Mexico.

Trujillo has had six children with four different fathers, one of whom had been living with Trujillo and the girls until he was arrested Dec. 3 for escaping from jail earlier this year.[1]

Authorities in Socorro, N.M., filed three counts of abandonment or abuse of a child against Trujillo in November 2003. The complaint states that Trujillo left her children in the house with a babysitter and didn't return that night. A neighbor complained the next day, and police went to the house with the paternal grandmother of the Garcia girls and woke up the babysitter in the back bedroom. The girls said they hadn't eaten or bathed that day.[2]

The girls had been removed from the home twice by authorities before being returned to their mother.

School District Superintendent Dr. Martin Foster has confirmed that the district sent a referral to the county Social Services agency at the beginning of the school year because staff had noticed marks and bruises on Zoe.[3]

The boyfriend charged has confessed to being drunk at the time of the incident.

See? Quit blaming video games! It's time to take this one to the parents, and also, to the "journalists" who "report" these stories, full of sensational, fear-mongering spin. Also from the Brainy Gamer post, let's have a look at some of the headlines spawned by this fiasco:

"Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" - CNN
"Mortal Kombat Killing: Zoe Garcia Murdered by Sister, Boyfriend" - The Post Chronicle
"Sister Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Death of 7-year-old - The Denver Post
"Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Death" - USA Today
"Still No Burial Plans in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" - Fox News Colorado
"Teens Charged in Video Game-Related Slaying" - WJBF-TV
"Mortal Kombat" Teens Fatality 7-year-old - CrunchGear

How's that for good reporting, based on what we now know?

SUB-UPDATE

Ironically, the CNN article with the headline "Teens Charged in 'Mortal Kombat' Killing" provides readers with links to not only this very article, but also it's counterpart on The Brainy Gamer. Basically, each of these articles point out that CNN (among others) is being highly irresponsible in the way it reports this type of news. Yay for self-debasement!