It was after two siblings got into a fight playing Grand Theft Auto that Police was called to the Whitleigh area of Plymouth to settle the dispute.
Fight between the two started after one of them shot the other’s character on the GTA 5 video game.
The father-of-two said he was shocked to find his older brother, who is aged in his 30s, at his front door screaming threats through his letterbox.
“I think it is silly and sad that a man in his 30s would want to do this but when he came to my door with my one-year-old and three-year-old there, with a baseball bat and saying ‘I’m going to kill you like you killed me on the game’, well I think the police needed to be called,” the man said.
“I work for a living, pay my taxes and after a hard day I sometimes come home and late in the evening, after the children are put to bed, I play video games to unwind and blow off steam. For me, it’s just a reality escape.
“Me and my older brother were playing online and he wasn’t happy that I killed his GTA character.
“He started texting me, saying ‘I’m going to kill you’ and ‘I’m going to make your kids and wife watch while you’re being killed, I’m going to kill your kids in front of your wife and when she’s crying I’m going to shoot her’.
“I thought ‘you’re having a laugh’.
“I got 50 more texts over the next 24 hours and the next night he’s knocking my door with a baseball bat shouting ‘I’m going to kill you like you killed my GTA character’. That’s when I called police.
“It’s like he tried to act GTA out in real life.”
Talking about the dispute, Sergeant Ryan Canning said “Officers attended an address after we received a call about threats being made.
“On attending the officers learned it was because one of the men had killed the other’s Grand Theft Auto character.
“They were not children – these were adults.”
The Sergeant said it took over an hour of negotiation to settle the dispute between the siblings. No-one was arrested over the incident.
At first I was getting ready to defend violent video games with “children should NOT be playing these violent games, they are made for adults”, and then I read the man was in his 30s!! I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.