This isn’t a game anymore.
“On Friday night, Mar 7, a 17-year-old boy used flower vases to beat his 68-year-old grandmother to death just because she scolded him while he was playing the popular computer game Defense of the Ancients (DOTA),” reports Reinir Padua in Philippine Star.
When asked to recount what happened, the boy said that his grandmother, identified as Estelita Novilla, fetched him from a computer shop in their neighborhood, where had been playing DOTA. When they got home at around 6pm, she scolded him. That was when he retaliated. Though he said he couldn’t exactly recall what had happened, police later said it was clear that he had used flower vases to hit Novilla.
At around 10pm, the boy said he went to the house of his aunt, Editha Novilla, to tell her what had happened. The aunt then sought assistance from barangay officials and police officers.
The boy had been left in the care of his grandmother, as his parents had separated and had repotedly gone on to have other families.
So, what’s in store for the boy?
Under the amended 2006 Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, an offender who’s aged more than 15 years and below 18 years is “exempt from criminal liability but will be subjected to an intervention program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.”
In other words, he gets away with killing his grandmother. Perhaps, he’ll just conveniently blame his actions on DOTA.
Photo from Google Maps
