GREELEY, Colorado - A Colorado teen has been sentenced to 36 years in prison for his role in the death of a 7-year-old girl during an apparent imitation of the "Mortal Kombat" video game.
Lamar Roberts was sentenced Friday in Greeley's Weld County District Court. The 18-year-old pleaded guilty last month to knowingly or recklessly causing a death through child abuse.
Prosecutors say Roberts and 17-year-old Heather Trujillo were baby-sitting Zoe Garcia on Dec. 6, 2007. They say the two kicked, hit and slammed Trujillo's half-sister to the floor.
I think that video games are great. When I come home from school, I love to sit down and blow off some steam while blowing off some zombies' heads. But it's so sad that these kids were so disillusioned by the video game world that eventually the video game ethics were the real world ethics. Maybe the little girl was crying. In Mortal Kombat, if a baby is crying, you could just kick its head off and it stops. I heard about a 12 year old boy who tried to jump from one tree branch to another because he had seen it in a video game. The branches were both about 20 feet up, and the boy hit the other branch, it broke, and he fell and died.
