Latest Mildly Offensive Videogame Murder Link Hits Press

Readers of the Miami Herald could be forgiven, when flicking through their local paper, that the ownership and usage of videogames is the fast-track to teenage murder. "How six died over an Xbox" the headline reads.

"Oh my golly!" thinks the average 50+ reader of the Herald, a horrific murder triggered by those evil new games machines!

The gleefully lurid description continued, "Girls screaming and the sickening sound of bats on flesh and bone marked the scene where six young people were murdered, a prosecutor says," a direct quote from a lawyer who could be mistaken for a frustrated novelist.

The story, which we'll keep brief as it has nothing to do with us, our industry or videogames in anything but a nominal way, sees felon Troy Victorino, 29, go on a bloodthirsty rampage, leading three others to murder six Burger King employees.

The Miami Herald reads, "Victorino became angry when Belanger took his Xbox video game and some clothing from her grandparents' vacant home where he had been squatting, but the Xbox wasn't the real reason for the slayings, Tanner said. ''He was disrespected. It was a matter of respect,'' he said.

So not about an Xbox at all then.