14 year-old Nathon Brooks shot his parents in their sleep last week after they took away his electronic devices, including video games, police say.
Brooks says he decided to break into his parents' gun safe, take out their .22 caliber pistol and attack them after his father, Joseph Brooks, told him he would spend his Saturday doing chores and playing basketball instead of playing video games, iFiberOne News reports. Brooks' parents grounded him, taking away his games for two weeks, after he was sent to detention at school.
Brooks told police he played video games "24/7." Before we jump straight to the violent video game argument, though, Brooks also said that he stopped playing violent video games when he began to worry that they were making him more violent.
Though Brooks had no criminal record, he did have a history of violent and disturbing behavior, police say. Brooks was accused, but never charged, with sexually assasulting a younger girl in 2010. More recently, Brooks' parents were increasingly concerned with his behavior: The teen had stolen his parent's credit card, prompting a conversation in which his parents warned him that behavior seemed unbalanced.
Brooks coincidentally (or not) used language from a trailer for "Far Cry 3" when describing how his parents expressed their concern: "...His mom had said he was meeting the definition of insanity, the fact that he kept trying the same thing over and over expecting a different result," according to the police report.
Ultimately, while video games may have played a role in the shooting, they were not the cause. Brooks said he spent close to 90 minutes before the attack debating whether or not to kill his parents and listening to the radio. In the end he said a voice in his head told him he'd be able to do whatever he wanted if his parents were dead. For Brooks, that meant playing video games.
Nathon Brooks is currently being held at the Grant County junvenile detention center. His bail has been set at $500,000.
