Source: Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post
Heather Trujillo, 16, and her boyfriend, Lamar Roberts, 17, of Westminster, Colorado are being charged with child abuse resulting in death after they beat Heather’s 7-year-old sister to death acting out moves from Mortal Kombat while babysitting yesterday.
Read the entire gut-wrenchingly disgusting story and why it is being unnecessarily blamed on video games after the jump.
Zoe Garcia, who was described as “a beautiful little girl”, died on Dec. 6 from “blunt force trauma” to her brain and central nervous system, according to the Weld County Coroner. Her right wrist was broken, her body had more than 20 bruises, her neck muscles were bleeding and a skin flap near her tongue had been torn.
Zoe’s older sister, Heather Trujillo, 16, and her boyfriend, Lamar Roberts, 17, of Westminster, were arrested Tuesday and charged with child abuse resulting in death, a Class II felony. They are in custody, each being held on $100,000 bond.
According to the arrest affidavits, Trujillo told investigators she and Roberts were babysitting Zoe and her twin, 3-year-old sisters, while their mother worked at the Corral Bar about five blocks away.
Trujillo said they were acting out the video game “Mortal Combat” by savagely hitting and kicking Zoe, even dropping her on her side, which broke her wrist. Roberts, who claimed to be a martial-arts expert with his hands registered as “lethal weapons, said Zoe had asked him to stop hitting her but that he didn’t because “…I was drunk.”
Roberts said he had performed a back kick on her, then kicked her again as she ran toward him. She fell back and didn’t get up. She had stopped breathing, and Trujillo and Roberts waited 15 minutes before calling for help.
They said they put her in a bath, which temporarily revived her, but that she stopped breathing again. Roberts said he cracked an egg in her mouth “to see if she was messing around with them.”
The egg went down her throat, the affidavit stated.
Finally, the mother and paramedics were called. Zoe was taken to the Northern Colorado Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.
Almost unbelievable, isn’t it? What really pisses me off is the fact that they’re blaming video game violence for this horrific tragedy. Look at what the Rocky Mountain News updated their article with:
The Greeley Tribune contributed to this report.
Violent video games have been around almost as long as video games themselves.
Video games such as Mortal Kom bat, Doom and Grand Theft Auto, which allow players to act out brutal violence, have sparked a heated debate regarding their effects on children.
In the case of teens Heather Maria Trujillo, 16, and Lamar Roberts, 17, they may have acted out the violence, hitting and kicking Heather’s 7-year-old sister, Zoe Garcia, last week in a game they called Mortal Kombat.
In 2000, the American Psychological Association released a report that specifically cited Mortal Kombat as a video game that can increase a person’s aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior.
Mortal Kombat is a video game, created by Midway, that allows players to choose a character and fight to the death using a variety of moves and weapons. Since the game’s inception in 1991, there has been opposition to the animated violence and blood.
The report, published in the APA Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, stated violent video games may be more harmful than violent TV and movies because they are interactive, engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor.
Yep, the typical “video games are ruining the world” write-up that always surfaces whenever violence is even remotely linked to a video game.
Why in the hell aren’t they attacking the fact that he was 17 and DRUNK?! Not only that, but from the reports these two teenagers sound like they are complete f’n idiotic morons! Who in their right mind would perform this kind of physical abuse to a 7-year-old? They cracked open a raw egg and put it in the child’s mouth to see if she was faking death for crissakes! They obviously have a lot more sociologically problems than violent video games. Video games had nothing to do with this incident, the problem is that these two pieces of human trash weren’t worthy of the brains God gave them.
Makes me sick.
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17 responses so far ↓
1 Lono // Dec 20, 2007 at 3:22 pm
These people actually make me physically sick.
2 Doc // Dec 20, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I have a couple of moves I’d like to try out on them…. But more Manhunt 2 than Mortal Kombat.
3 Andrew // Dec 20, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Video games have become the scape goat for everything. Pretty soon, they’ll blame video games like The Sims for teen pregnancy
4 Vluhd // Dec 20, 2007 at 4:08 pm
This is absolutely terrible. The only part about it that\’s worse is that it\’s getting blamed on video games. Lame. How long can our society go on using everything as a scapegoat before we look at ourselves and realize that it really is our fault.
5 Pablos102030 // Dec 20, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I’m serious when I say people like this should be hung. England always has the best punishments.
6 DemonicDerek // Dec 20, 2007 at 4:33 pm
lol @ doc\’s comment
On another note, those kids are just straight-up dombasses.
7 lwelyk // Dec 20, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I have a couple of moves I’d like to try out on them…. But more Manhunt 2 than Mortal Kombat.
________________________________________________
How about the Fatalaties? I think that’d serve them right.
8 Thr3e2wenty8 // Dec 20, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I personally wouldn’t be so violent if it weren’t for shotty journalism.
9 NoneOfYourBusiness // Dec 20, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Absolutely ridiculous…the poor 7 year old is being completely ignored and Mortal Kombat is getting all the attention….
10 evlon // Dec 20, 2007 at 9:52 pm
omg, thats so horrible, I agree with lono, I nearly threw up.(reminds me of the DnD abusive parents)
11 Bauer22 // Dec 20, 2007 at 11:40 pm
I hope this people die a horrible death. Now I like video games but this is sick! Have fun roting in Hell.
12 Alecsander_C // Dec 21, 2007 at 2:11 am
Man, this is what Jack Thompson is going to dig and that pisses me off, but a thing I can’t reacall in mortal kombat is beating up young kids, sure there’s the babalitys but they don’t even touch them once they get turned into kids, we all know games don’t make you go psycho on kids, there’s got to be millions of gamers that never “went out to practice” MK or any other game in real life, and excuses are like a**holes, everybody’s got one, bottom line this people deserve to go to jail or worse, and don’t blame the games but the people responsible for this
13 Charles // Dec 21, 2007 at 3:11 am
After reading all of this and seeing that the reporters had linked it to Mortal Kombat, I did a mental double take. WTF? They skipped past MANY things that should be considered first. Parental responsibility. The parents are there to ensure that their kids know right and wrong. (I know he is 17, but this seems to be the typical story about ~america\’s youth~ being corrupted)
Then substance abuse. Not only was he under the influence (easily passed over by the media, apparently games are more mind altering…) but under age too!
14 Normansanzo // Dec 21, 2007 at 9:04 am
WTF were they thinking!!! I can’t under stand how some one could do this for fun. The fact that that he was drunk pisses me off. They should just throwaway the key and leave them for dead before some stupid lawyer come in and use them as an example for some stupid case that Video Game cause valiance.
15 Irapotato // Dec 21, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Its s*** like this that makes Jack Thompson so rich and (in)famous. I totally agree with Lono and Doc; these people are totally f***** up before stupid games like Mortal Combat and Manhunt came around. The fact that every single reporter without a career and every writer without notoriety has to side with the crazies. As Seanbaby once said (Continued)
16 Irapotato // Dec 21, 2007 at 3:21 pm
“Lets not throw away the option to blame the killers for the crime”.
Irapotato
17 8bitBass // Dec 24, 2007 at 9:22 am
All the horror of this story aside…
Who even likes Mortal Kombat these days anyways?
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