Robbers Scared by GTA

HellSpam writes "Some robbers tried to burglarize a poor old lady and her 3 grandsons. Her grandsons happened to be playing Grand Theft Auto:San Andreas, and the sounds of the police from the game scared them away! From the article: "The police in the game were saying, 'Stop, we have you surrounded. This is the police.' The burglar, unknowingly, thought this was the actual police and panicked ... being apprehended by PlayStation." Now, no more saying games are bad for you..."

Comments

Bad luck for the burglar

[Insipid Trunculance]

that he was in the US.In our small country , England , the Govt would charge the old lady , for scaring the burglar.

On a serious note , this is a very big issue.Unlike the US , where the rights of home owners using force against burglars are quite clear , in the UK this is a grey area.Home owners can use reasonable force only and that is decided by the courts.

Re:Bad luck for the burglar

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada, the general concept is much the same as the UK's -- except, in my 4th year university law class, we were told that a homeowner is allowed to defend himself with "similar" force.

Thus, using a gun as defense against a burglar with a knife could very well result in serious chargers against the homeowner. (Though, "gun vs. gun" is sometimes okay. There are numerous cases in which a homeowner has shot -- and killed -- a robber [with a gun], and it was deemed to be in self-defense.)

I suspect that this creates a bit of a grey area if attacked with, for example, a knife, and you defend with, as another example, a baseball bat. ("My dagger +1 is just like your club +1, so it's safe for us to fight.")

Re:What I wish...

[vranash]

WTF, this is SA, you don't use baseball bats when you have a perfectly good dildo just waiting to beat down some bitch ;-p

Re:Since when...

[Chess_the_cat]

Especially as seeing she's a poor old lady.

Re:And what if

[rebeka thomas]

> He had been carrying a gun, panicked and started shooting.

Then we'd be in a parallel universe where that happened. It didn't.

What if Linux caused cancer? What if bathing in magma cured acne? What if Steve Jobs wins the next world series?

We don't have to think about these things as they're not happening in the real world.

Updated "Hannah and the Whistling Teakettle"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one that remembers this from elementary school?(From Amazon.com)

Hannah's grandmother, a loving granny, but a hard case when it comes to accepting gifts, learns the pleasures and benefits of receiving in this story of expectations. Hannah is on a visit to her grandfolks and their soda fountain in the Bronx. She has brought along a whistling teapot as a present for her grandmother, who routinely returns most gifts as frivolous. That appears to be the fate of this one as well when grandma gives it the curse: "It's not a necessity." When Grandma's attention is distracted by a customer out front, Hannah takes the opportunity to put the kettle on the old stove and demonstrate that her grandma no longer need let her tea water boil silently away. Two strange men enter the shop and while one tries to distract Grandma, the other jimmies the pay phone. Next thing you know all chaos breaks loose as a high-pitched whistle cuts the air. Thinking its a police whistle, the robbers skedaddle. Grandma figures she'll keep the kettle after all: " `That little bird on the kettle maybe saved our life!' Hannah's grandmother had said. And life, she said, was a necessity." Palmisciano's (A Spaldeen Story) artwork is filled with little details that fix the time period as a gentler one: Grandmas sagging socks, Grandpas two-toned shoes, and the old-fashioned shop with its 20 cent sundaes. A charming story from a more innocent time.

Along the same lines....

[niew]

A friend of mine was kicked back on his couch in his boxers watching a movie (home theater type setup)...

There was a knock at the door, he opened it a crack to answer it (he was in his boxers). The door was forced open and he was pinned to the floor by a bunch of heavily armed cops!

It seems a neighboor had heard somebody yell "Everybody get down!" followed by some gun shots, put 1 and 1 together and came up with 3...

Simple answer.

[Unknown Poltroon]

Dont own only one gun. Or one knife.

"Officer, he broke in, and had just picked up my other gun and i was forced to shoot him!!"

Same goes for knives. THe only problem is, sadly, you can no longer just beat the crap/wound someone breaking into your house, you have to kill them to make sure you dont get sued or arrested.

Re:Simple answer.

[austad]

A cop friend once told me that if someone breaks into your house, it's technically illegal to shoot and kill them. However, he said that you bet your ass he would shoot and kill anyone that broke into his house. He also told me that if it ever happens, to make damn sure you shoot to kill, because if the person lives, you'll end up in court getting sued or going to prison.

As far as I'm concerned, if someone comes into my house and forcefully comes through my locked bedroom door, they do not have good intentions. They will either be shot or chopped up with a razor sharp samurai sword.

Oddly enough, there have been a couple of incidents lately in my city where burglars have been breaking into occupied houses around 5am, tying up the occupants at gunpoint, and then stealing all of their crap.

Get yourself an alarm system, it's a good deterrent, and has the bonus of alerting you and waking you up if someone does decide to break in. With a properly installed alarm system, you can be reasonably sure that the bumps in the night are nothing. I've was robbed once at a house I was renting, they took a bunch of stuff. And, one of my roomies was home at the time, watching TV in the basement. A second time, we had an alarm system. Someone worked the back door open and it set off the alarm, they ran away. They are lucky they ran away too because they would have only been seconds away from being shot.

Come on people!

[Fulkkari]

Most likely the burglar didn't get scared of the sound from GTA because it sounded like cops. When he heard the sound he probably just figured out someone was at home and decided to escape. Burglars want to do their business alone... not when the house is packed with people.

The article doesn't say GTA:SA

[mark-t]

According to the Article, the game was "Grand Theft Auto". That's it... no suffix.

So I'm trying to figure out... where did the person who posted this story get the idea that it was definitely from the San Andreas edition of GTA?

I haven't played any of the GYA games... is the sound effect being referred to by this story only in the SA version of GTA or something?

Certainly if it _was_ GTA:SA, then the story's a fake because I understand it wasn't available back in March.

Along those lines

[Sycraft-fu]

What worries me is that if an ammendment can be legslated away "for the public good" what about the others? There are plenty of other ammendments that are troublesome, and the government has made attempts in the past and now to curtail.

If they legslate away the second, then that's great prescident for them to say "We need to get rid of the sixth ammendment. Look at all the drug dealers and evil doers that get off on technicalities because of their scumbag lawyers. The defandant doesn't need a lawyer, they just twist the truth. Our Great and Noble prosecutors are only concerned with the truth, so that's all that is needed. Don't worry, this won't be abused, it just helps make you safe."

I mean you can argue that basically any ammendment should be done away with to make us safer. In a perfect world, that'd be the case. If the government were composed of perfectly noble beings, than none of these rights would be necessary, because all they do is et in the way of the conviction of the guilty.

However, that's NOT the case. Governments are corrupt, all of them, to some degree because HUMANS are corrupt. There are next to no examples of perfectly noble human beings. So things like the Bill of Rights exist to control that, and to protect people by ensuring the government can't do whatever it wants.

Where could this be?

[RobinH]

Where on earth would you live that someone wanting to steal your DVD player and the $50 worth of cash in your dresser would actually bother to bring a gun with them? If they come in and realize you're home, they just going to leave. Plus, try it in my house and you're going to get a jaw full of rottweiller teeth in your leg.

I just find it odd that even though property crime rates are about even in both Canada and the U.S., you see the following difference in homicide rates:

Homicide (per 100,000)
Canada: 1.9
U.S.: 5.6

That's even though Canadians are more urban, less pro-life, less fire-and-brimstone religious, just as multi-cultural, and own almost as many guns (about 70% of the U.S. rate of ownership - though it's admittedly hard to find exact rates).

Does anybody have ANY idea why the homicide rate is so much higher in the U.S. than other industrialized nations? I mean a real intelligent idea? Canadians and Americans just aren't that different, so why the huge difference in this one area? If someone could figure it out, the U.S. could stand to stop 10,000 homicides per year. If each life is 1 million dollars (per insurance rates), thats 10 billion in savings every year!