Grand Theft Auto pulled after teenage murder

A Thai teenager supposedly obsessed with Grand Theft Auto is facing death by lethal injection after robbing and stabbing a taxi driver to death.

This has led to a Thai video game distributor halting sales of the game.

Stories abound that the teenager was inspired to kill by the ultra-violent computer game.

Police called the 18-year-old student an obsessive player, and claim that he confessed to committing the crime because of the game.

Sky News reports that chief investigator Veeravit Pipattanasak said: "He said he wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game."

It is also reported that he was angry that his parents could not afford to buy him a copy.

If that's the case, how did he play it so much that it turned his brain into that of a crazed killer? This smacks rather of a Barry George situation or just another attempt to lazily pin the blame for violent crime on video games. Oh, he stabbed a cabbie - I saw something like that in Grand Theft Auto...

Ladda Thangsupachai, from Thailand's Culture Ministry, said the murder was a 'wake-up call' for authorities to tackle the issue of violent video games:

"This time-bomb has already exploded and the situation could get worse.

"Today it is a cab driver, but tomorrow it could be a video game shop owner."

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