Chinese gamer murders young woman over $73 to hide his gaming addiction

I’ve often written that gaming addiction is a serious problem in China, and it’s not uncommon to read about murders that seem to have some connection to the perpetrators’ gaming habits. But this summer saw one of the most direct — and most horrifying — gaming-related murders yet, in a case that is just now being reported in the Chinese press thanks to a Tuesday report on CCTV.

It started on July 22, when police in Zaozhuang, Shandong got a call about an injured woman. When they arrived on the scene they found the woman — a 24 year old named Zhao — mostly nude, covered in blood, and severely injured. She was immediately taken to the hospital but ultimately did not survive, having suffered severe damage to her skull and brain. At first, police suspected that she had also been raped, but forensic evidence later proved that she had not.

Luckily, Zhao’s killer wasn’t particularly smart, and catching him proved fairly easy.

Mr. Sun, a local 20-year-old who was still living at home, loved games. After dropping out of college, his parents asked him to get a job and help support the family, but instead of actually getting one he just told them that he had. When he left the house each morning he went to the internet cafe to play, not returning home until quitting time. Obviously, though, this ruse would have a limited shelf life if Sun couldn’t figure out a way to get some money to give to his parents. Originally he planned to borrow it from friends, but no one would lend him money, so instead he decided he would have to steal it.

On the morning of July 22, he went to Ms. Zhao’s cosmetics store, which was in a relatively isolated spot, and after loitering outside casing the joint, he determined that Zhao was alone in the store and the time was right to strike. He found a hoe, entered the store, and began smashing her in the head with it. After she fell, unconscious, he removed her clothes in an apparent attempt to make the police think it was a rape scene, and then made off with his take from the robbery: a measly 450 RMB ($73).

What Sun didn’t realize was that security cameras outside Zhao’s shop had caught him pacing back and forth suspiciously, and that they ultimately proved he was the last person to enter the shop before the person who reported the crime to police. Operating on what proved to be a fair assumption about the behavior patterns of young males, police cross-checked this footage with surveillance footage from local internet cafes, and found someone they suspected was Sun. Since China’s cafes all require real-name registration, Sun’s identity and place of residence were quickly determined and he was quickly arrested.

The Chinese news reports speculate that Sun’s immersion in violent games helped detach him from the real world and facilitated his committing this heinous crime. The science that I’ve seen — I wrote about this in depth a while ago — suggests that actually the opposite may be true; that it was his inherently aggressive tendencies that drew him into a game addiction in the first place. Whatever the cause, though, Sun’s crime is horrific, and one wonders if more acceptance and better treatment options for gaming addiction in China might help avert tragedies like this.