GTA copycat killer targets cabbie

A THAI YOUTH WAS ARRESTED this weekend after allegedly robbing and killing a Bangkok cabbie. This would sound banal (albeit tragic) if it weren’t for the fact the 18-year-old was trying to enact in real life what he’d played on Grand Theft Auto IV.

Police claim “He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game”. Apparently it wasn’t. According to the coppers, the cabbie is presumed to have fought back resulting in the fatal stabbing. The youth was caught while backing up a street, driving the cab, with the injured cabbie in the back seat.

Thai law is harsh and the death penalty is firmly in place. This particular youngster now faces possible death by lethal injection if he is successfully convicted of robbery and murder. The 18 year-old's parents say he was a polite and diligent fellow. Maybe if he’s polite enough he can get away with life in prison. We don’t know what Thai law is like, but we imagine he won’t be copping an insanity plea.

On the dollar (baht?) end of business, Take Two’s Thai distributor, New Era Interactive, immediately sensing the manure storm, rang up retail outlets and asked them to remove the game from the shelves. The franchise has, over the course of (all) its incarnations, been criticised for stimulating youths’ appetite for violence and has been the target of more than one attempt to ban it to hell. However, even if kids don’t play video games, that doesn’t mean they’ll grow a moral compass in sync with the remainder of society...

No doubt there will be some rekindling and hoisting of crusader’s flags. Interesting if one Thai teen singlehandedly achieves what years of well-funded lobbies and glory hound lawyers failed to...

What this does prove, tho’, is there are people with stupid cells on both sides of the argument. µ