Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
He Murdered Someone Over a Video Game - The Daniel Petric story
26 Apr 2025
Daniel Petric, a 16-year-old from Wellington, Ohio, committed a tragic crime in 2007 that drew national attention. After his father, a Pentecostal minister, confiscated his copy of the video game Halo 3, Daniel retrieved the game and then he then shot both of his parents.
Full Episode
Has anyone ever died because of a video game? Actually, yes. This kid unalives someone because of Halo 3. Here's what happened. Now the kid's name is Daniel, and Daniel's 15, living in Ohio, and he's a normal high school kid, and he loves playing football. It's a big part of his life. But one day in 2006, his whole world changes because he goes on a snowboarding trip with his friends.
And so he's out, and he's up on the mountains, snowboarding, goofing around, and suddenly, boom, he crashes hard, and he injures his spine pretty bad. In fact, it's so severe, any further damage could potentially paralyze him. So he can't run, he can't play sports anymore, including football, which is a huge deal to him.
I mean, he's been playing football since he was younger and suddenly he has to stop? Now what's he gonna do? But then it gets even worse because Daniel contracts a staph infection. So for a while, he's super sick and he can't really move much at all.
And so he's bedridden, and he has to be home most of the time, and he can't go to high school anymore until he fully recovers, so I guess he starts getting homeschooled, and this goes on for around a year. And during this year, he has to find a way to pass the time.
And after a while, I guess his parents start letting him leave the house to go hang out at his friend's house, and it's there that he experiences something he's never experienced before. A video game called Halo. Now, Daniel has played games before, mostly with his dad. They would play a lot of, like, Madden, because, you know, he loves football.
But he's never played anything like Halo before, which, if you've never played, it's a first-person shooter where you, like, run around blowing up aliens. And sure, it's a bit violent, but whatever. It's fun. And instantly, Daniel loves this game, and he wants to play it all the time. In fact, over time, he starts getting obsessed with it. He plays it for hours at a time.
Sometimes he'll play it up to 18 hours in a day, only stopping to like eat some cereal or go to the bathroom. Now, at this part of the story, it isn't actually clear if he's still playing it at his friend's house or if he's now playing it at home or both. But it is clear that now Bro has a gaming problem. It is all he thinks about. He is addicted.
Now at some point, I guess, he brings the game up to his parents. And his parents, oh, they are not happy. See, Daniel's mom and dad, who we'll just call mom and dad, mom and dad are super religious. In fact, dad is the pastor at a local church. So they don't want their kid playing violent video games. Jesus would never. And so they tell him no. No violent shooting games are allowed in this house.
And this pisses Daniel off. I mean, they just don't understand how much he likes this game. He doesn't have to play it at his friends' houses. Now what's he gonna do? And so at this point, it's 2007, and he is 16 years old now. And around this time, kaboom, Halo 3 comes out. And Daniel, of course, he wants to play it so bad, but he doesn't want to disobey his parents.
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