My Friend’s Neighbor Shot Her Husband Because He Played Too Many Video Games

I swear, this stuff only seems to happen to me.

I was on the phone with my friend talking about his boyfriend issues, and then suddenly, I heard him scream. Then, I heard a thud and his roommate scream, "GET DOWN! THOSE ARE GUNSHOTS!"

I didn’t hear the shots, but I did hear the ensuing chaos over the other end of the phone. I heard my friend scramble to grab his cats, him hunkering down and his roommate screaming. Then, things quieted down. I heard the clunky click of him picking up the phone again.

"Dude, what just happened?"

"Let me call you back. I gotta call the police."

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I waited on the other end of the phone with bated breath. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I called him repeatedly, then got told to hang up because he was in police questioning. After a terrifying pause, he called me back up.

"Honey, you are not going to believe this..."

So, the gunshots did not enter his apartment. Rather, they entered the apartment behind his. Apparently, he just watched his neighbor get rolled out in a stretcher with the neighbor’s wife being led out in cuffs.

"Dude, what the h*** happened? Are you okay!?"

"Hon, my neighbor just shot her husband. And you’re not going to believe this. She shot him over video games," he said.

"Wait, what?"

"She. Shot. Him. Over. Gaming. As in, he gamed too much, she snapped, she took a gun, shot the guy, and put a bunch of holes in the apartment."

"Well, damn."

And that was that. I didn’t ask if he died or not, primarily because I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid.

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The fact that he was shot over video games displays two major trends I see.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve met a fair number of women who openly admit that they would never date a gamer. In fact, they view even possessing a game system as a red flag — and trust me, I get it.

I’ve seen plenty of couples where a guy dives into gaming and doesn’t give his partner the time of day. Gaming circles can be incredibly toxic and misogynistic. Pair the toxic attitudes of gamers with the way that you can get addicted to playing them, and you’ve got a bad time with your partner.

That’s trend number one: women getting sick and tired of seeing the men they date sink their lives into gaming. This isn’t anything new, per se. It’s been around since the ages of Sonic the Hedgehog’s first release.

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The second trend, though? I’m not sure that people are even aware of it.

Did you know that numbers suggest that young women are becoming more violent? It’s true. Arrests like the one I mentioned above are starting to increase nationwide — and by "starting," I mean this trend has been going on for more than a decade.

So, there are a couple of reasons for arrests going up that I think we can already see:

1. Society has started to be okay with girls showing their tough side. This is true for everything from sports to actively confronting things. Passivity is not the rule anymore.
2. Mental illness is at an all-time high. While not all mentally ill people are violent, violence can erupt from it. I strongly suspect that the woman who shot her man had mental problems and was abusive prior to her actually pulling the gun out.
3. Women are actually fighting back when men assault them and harass them. I know of at least one man who pressed charges after a woman hit him after he grabbed her.

Obviously, most violent shootings are still male-enacted. But, this brings me to a question that I’ve been wondering about for a while: is it going to stay that way?

Her trying to kill her man over video games also sounds like a "last straw" moment for her.

I can’t help but think of a lot of women I know who have fantasized about hacking their partners’ XBoxes into tiny pieces with an axe. It’s easy to blame the game system for their partner’s obvious neglect. Don’t blame the games for your partners’ lack of support, people.

From the little I could glean, I think this was a matter of an already-toxic relationship that just got pushed over the edge when her man chose to use video games to decompress. Something finally broke in her and she popped a cap in him.

Make no mistake about it. The right way to handle a partner who prefers a game system to you is to dump him. You’re not compatible, and it’s not right to stay with a guy who prefers life in pixels versus the seamless life of today.

She absolutely should have packed a bag and left.

With all that said, this had to be the wildest thing I’ve seen all week — and it deserves a little thought, don’t you think?

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Ossiana Tepfenhart is a writer whose work has been featured in Yahoo, BRIDES, Your Daily Dish, Newtheory Magazine, and others.