I Can't. Stop. Playing!
Video game addiction is normally shrugged off as “no big deal”. However, it can destroy families, cause people to lose their grip on reality, and for some, even cause death! It’s hard to fathom how someone can let a video game take over their life, but sadly it happens. A mother allowed her three year old daughter to slowly starve to death while she was playing the online fantasy game, World of Warcraft. Rebecca Colleen Christie will be jailed for 25 years after she was convicted of second degree murder and child abandonment back in 2009.
According to Mail online, “The toddler was so hungry that she ate cat littler and weighed just 23 pounds when she was rushed to the hospital clinging to life.”
It also stated, “Doctors who examined the badly malnourished girl said her ribs were protruding from her body and found she had gained just one pound and a half in the last year of her life.”
“Christie, the wife of an air force sergeant, had called paramedics to their home on the Holloman Air Force base in Las Cruces, New Mexico, when she found her daughter limp and unconscious. Doctors were unable to save the toddler, who had been allowed to 'wither away' as her mother played the online game with friends.”
Disgusting right? You may be thinking, “Where was the father for all of this?” Her ex-husband Sgt Derek Wulf told a court, “he would return home from work to find his daughter (Brandi) without any water or food. FBI agents who investigated the death found that on the day Brandi died a computer in the home showed 'continuous activity' from noon until 3am.”
Mail Online also stated, “Wulf told an FBI agent he would regularly come home from work and find his daughter with her water glass empty, because his wife was busy 'playing on the computer', according to court documents.”
“There appeared to be so little to eat in the home with its overflowing litter box and pervasive smell of cat urine - that the child would eat cat food, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office."
The father has pleaded guilty to child neglect, and will be sentenced on June 15th. He faces lesser charges only facing up to three years in prison and one year of supervised release.
I can’t help but wonder how the mother survived. Obviously she didn’t die of malnutrition, so she had to be eating at some point. Would she eat and not feed her daughter!? How disturbing…
Do you think 25 years in prison seems fair, or should she have received more jail time? Some say World of Warcraft is more addictive than cocaine, if you have played it, what makes it so addictive? What’s your opinion?
