Normally, it takes a third party to blame a crime on a video game. A sensationalist tablid, or a stuffy politician. Not in Zachary Burgess’ case, though, the 20-year-old only too happy to blame his own actions on Grand Theft Auto.
Police report that early on Saturday morning Burgess jumped into a car in a parking space and drove off, despite the fact a female passenger was still inside the vehicle.
He smashed into “several other cars” before the lady escaped. Police also say that Burgess was caught when witnesses got hold of him and held him down until the cops arrived on the scene.
Local media say Burgess told authorities he “wanted to see what it would be like” to play Grand Theft Auto “in real life”.
Hint: it also ends in prison when you’re caught, although sadly your sentence now plays out in real time.
BRPD: Kidnapping, vehicle theft suspect claimed video game tie [WBRZ]
Comments
28 responses to “Idiot Steals Car, Blames Own Crime On Grand Theft Auto”
An older boy told me to do it – Homer Simpson
He was paid to do it. This is a right-wing plot to generate bad publicity for GTA.
Also something about lizard people, I suppose.
As much as I want to say that’s nonsense..there’s a chance it could be true. Fox News is gonna have a field day with this and blame every crime from now on on video games..
The lizard people? Or the other bit?
Little from column A little from column B
Psst..we don’t talk about the lizard people..they’re watching..always watching
Their eyelids are transparent, so they literally never stop watching. Not even to blink.
Don’t they already do that >.>
I was walking to Safeway yesterday (to get milk, for those who care about motivations) and I saw a modded out sports car parked on the side on the road. The part of my brain that is horribly scarred and rotted by my week long GTA binge so wanted to smash the window and drive off……
Which brand of milk? Select is the cheapest since they phased out Homebrand (I’m betting it’s the same milk anyway). But I’ve found the Pauls “Pure Organic” in the one litre (green/white bottle) is the most delicious milk ever (it differs from it’s two litre counterpart though, only buy it in one litre for maximum delicious).
I have to agree with you that the Organic is much better milk, and I too like to buy it on occasion, though you will usually find Select in my fridge. I suppose that’s just because milk doesn’t come up too high on my uni budget list of priorities, though I like to think that in the future all this education will pay off and my cereal will bathe in the glories of Paul’s Pure Organic every day. A dairy product I will not skimp on though, is ice cream. Prestige Coffee Creme in a Select waffle cone, erry day.
Edit: Do you think that the different bottles effect taste due to the material? This is not something that I’ve ever noticed, probably because I never buy two litre bottles of anything.
^^^ These conversations have been horribly influenced by GTA games given you can buy food in them…
Nah, this is just how much we care about idiots blaming stupid actions of video games now. =D
^^^ The denial in this comment is clearly influenced by GTA as Niko Bellic takes no responsibility for himself, neither does Roman! THESE GAMES ARE RUINING OUR LIVES!!!!
I think the two litre is processed differently. It’s been a little while since I compared the two, but the two litre had a phrase or sentence concerned with it’s preparation that is absent on the one litre bottle. Either way, I’ve found it [one litre] to be a more creamy milk.
The Woolworth’s owned Macro Organic isn’t bad either. But it’s no Pauls.
As for icecream, Connoisseur takes the cake hands down. But it’s expensive. REALLY expensive. Coming in second is Homebrand Full Cream (believe it or not).
(Three years in a Woolworths (all opinions stated are my own and do not represent that of the company) perishables department if anyone is wondering why I seem to know.)
9 years woolies reporting in. I used to live near a dairy and would go through some 4 litres a day of pure cows milk straight from the vat at 4:30 in the morning and it was glorious. Nothing comes close but there are still some decent milks out there, the A2 I believe it is, ranks up there pretty highly for me but I still only drop my $3 on 3 litres of Select milk.
Also, does it give anyone else the angries that there is but a handful of flavours of yoghurt in full cream full fat varieties? Seems that you can pick up all sorts of things if you like your yoghurt watered down, passionfruit, mixed berry, honey and caramel etc, but if you want full fat you have vanilla and strawberry.
Connoisseur’s good, but Serendipity’s “Death by chocolate” is where it’s at. Hard to find and bloody expensive, but well worth tracking down. In fact, i’m eating it right now.
As for milk, i personally think the container has a lot to do with the flavour, and refuse to buy anything in plastic. Cartons ftw.
Indeed the 1 L & 2L Pauls milk are processed differently.
For some reason, the 1L is non-homogenised, whereas the 2L is homogenised.
This is the reason that the 1L tastes so good, and indeed, is so much better for you.
Best milk you can get at a supermarket.
Wait, wasn’t this about GTA V?
That’s the word I wanted! I was thinking pasteurised, but figured that couldn’t be the difference between the two.
And nah it was about some idiot. Milk’s just more interesting. 😉
I know it’s a little ‘off’ topic from the riveting milk discussion (PUNINTENDED) but I have to admit that the couple days I spent with GTA V left my brain a little scarred and rotted. Walking down the street I had a faint urge to size up folks who looked like they thought they were hard and shoulder-bump them into provoking experience-earning fist-fights.
I haven’t had sex in six years and still haven’t committed rape. So, there’s at least a baseline for how long you can play a game before it starts to effect your mind. If you want to put instinct and video stimulation on the same level, that is.
Honestly though, I wanna know what milk OP bought. That’s the real mystery in this post.
I fucking love this thread.
Sounds like an iron clad defense to me.
I think this is a load of shit.
> “Local media say Burgess told authorities he “wanted to see what it would be like” to play Grand Theft Auto “in real life”.”
Local media SAY, but we all know that these prats will SAY anything to generate news, especially when its something like this that can drive that news hard. Like much of the mainstream media, they take one small fact and turn it into giant catastrophe.
The same thing is employed by some tech journalists, how they take one small comment and are able to generate at least six articles out of them, that rehash the same statement as a confirmation or rumor.
You know, now that I think about it, this is probably the strongest argument against the influence of games on criminal behaviour.
We’re all pretty well-aware that folks will blame their behaviour on anything close-at-hand, whether it’s blaming their victim, drugs, alcohol, whoever took all their money and left them desperate to illegally get more… whatever. But how often do we hear an actual criminal blaming the games for their actions? Pretty rare.
This is quite possibly because as a defense it doesn’t work, and those with impending convictions would prefer a more time-honoured defense that DOES work, such as ‘the voices told me to do it’, or ‘I was abused as a child,’ or ‘I can’t be held accountable for my actions when I’m really fucked up.’
All the same. If people are claiming it or admitting to it, there’s probably something to that. Telling criminals that games made them do it feels a lot like parents telling their gay kid that ‘it’s a phase’. It comes from a position of complete incomprehension.
The optimism is strong in this one 😛
You know they are going to play the face value card just this one time, like when someone tries to reverse psych you and you just go along with what they suggest anyway to their detriment as you didn’t do the opposite of what they wanted.
Well. The strongest argument… to right-minded people who aren’t going to just jump on the one exception that ‘proves’ their theory.
Like those idiots who say that despite Rockstar porting pretty much every single game they’ve ever made to PC, the existence of RDR as an anomaly ‘proves’ that a GTA V port won’t happen.
Dude in my hometown stole a golf buggy, rolled it in a sand trap and when he got caught, blamed it on GTA: Vice City. Cops just confiscated his copy and he got off Scott free.
This reeks of attention seeking. He’ll go to prison for some token amount of time, sure, but he will always thrive as the face of Video Games Make People Do Bad Things for fox news and the like, and he will likely get lots of money to talk about it to the media. With the hysteria, it was only a matter of time before someone pulled this.
In short, video games don’t make people do shit like this, “news” opinions do. 😛