Italian Teen Stabs Father Over PlayStation Game

I’m not sure which part of this story disturbs me more.  There are so many stereotypes here: angry teenager, passionate Italians, violent soccer fan.  As reported by Reuters, Fabrizio R., suffered a deep cut to the throat after his 16-year-old son, Mario, attacked him during an argument on Sunday over the soccer video game FIFA 2009.

Police said the argument broke out when the 46-year-old offered his son advice on how to improve his play, and then turned the television off in response to his son’s behavior.  Fetching a knife from the kitchen, Mario then stabbed his father in the neck before returning to clean the 15-inch knife at the kitchen sink in front of his mother and leaving it to dry on the draining-board.

Ummm.  I’ve been pissed off when throwing an interception in Madden or falling off of a building to my death in Assassin’s Creed– but that hasn’t led to me stabbing anyone over it.

Forty-six year-old housewife Monica B,. told Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera that she had no idea what had happened until her husband stumbled into the room, clutching his throat. “I saw Mario come back into the room, he seemed calm, he went to the sink and I noticed him washing a knife,” Monica B. told the media. “Then my husband came into the room with a hand round his neck, dripping blood.”

The teenager shut himself in his bedroom after the attack and made no attempt to resist arrest, police said.  Fabrizio R. is recovering in a hospital.

The game had been given to Mario a few days earlier, as a birthday present.  “Mario is obsessed. He’s forever playing on his PlayStation, and we bought him FIFA 2009 because we didn’t want him playing violent games,” his mother told Il Corriere.

Hmmm.  I’m not a doctor.  But I don’t think that little Mario’s soccer obsession or time playing video games made him stab his father.  There is something else going on here.  Usually, a teenager will talk back, maybe toss a piece of furniture, before breaking out the cutlery and going after the pater familias’ jugular vein.