Two teenagers in the US have been charged with killing a seven-year-old girl by beating her to death with moves copied from violent video game, Mortal Kombat.
Lamar Roberts, 17, and girlfriend Heather Trujillo, 16, allegedly killed Trujillo's half-sister Zoe Garcia while they were babysitting her, prosecutors said.
The pair have been charged as adults in Colorado on one count each of felony child abuse causing death, state prosecutor Robert Miller said.
According to police reports, the child lost consciousness and stopped breathing after the teenagers hit, kicked and body-slammed her, imitating moves used in the controversial video game.
Trujillo and Roberts are said to have tried to revive the girl by putting her under running water and attempting CPR before they called her mother and paramedics. But the girl, from Johnstown, Colorado, died in hospital.
An autopsy revealed she had a broken wrist, more than 20 bruises, swelling of the brain, and bleeding in her neck muscles and under her spine. Roberts said he was downstairs playing video games while the sisters wrestled upstairs, police said.
But a witness quoted in a police affidavit said Roberts told her he had kicked the girl. The documents say Trujillo told police she was on top of her sister "holding her arms down with her legs while tapping on her chest like a typewriter when the victim passed out."
Roberts was not wrestling but was acting "as the referee," the affidavits say. The witness told police that Roberts said Zoe had told them to stop wrestling.
According to the affidavit, when the witness asked why they didn't stop, he responded: "I don't know; I was drunk."
In a interview later at police headquarters, Trujillo said she tripped Zoe, "punched her in the stomach, karate chopped her lower arms, punched and pinched the victim's thighs, kicked her in the shins, slapped her stomach and buttocks and poked at the victim's chest", the Rocky Mountain News reported.
If convicted, the teens could be sentenced to 48 years in prison. They were being held on $100,000 USD bail at the Weld County Jail after their arrest on Tuesday night.
They are set to appear in court on Friday.
In 2000, the American Psychological Association released a report that said Mortal Kombat was a video game that could increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviour. The game, created by Midway, allows players to choose a character and fight to the death using a variety of moves and weapons. It was first released in 1991 and has drawn repeated criticism about its animated violence and blood.
The report, published in the APA Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, stated violent video games may be more harmful than violent TV and movies because they are interactive - and require the player to identify with the aggressor.
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