Daniel Petric

Background Petrić was born on August 24, 1991, to Mark Petrić, a Pentecostal minister, and Susan Petrić. He lived in Brighton Township with his parents and attended high school in nearby Wellington. Following a skiing injury, Petrić contracted a staphylococcus infection and was housebound for a year. During this time, he was introduced to the Halo video game series. Petrić quickly became addicted to the games, often playing for "seven or eight hours a day" at his friend Jonathan Johnson's house.

When Petrić's father insisted that he leave home if he could not curtail his gaming, Petrić moved in with Johnson for a weekend, playing Halo for up to eighteen hours a day. Eventually, Petrić bought his own copy of the newly released Halo 3 without his father's knowledge, but Mark soon caught him with the game and confiscated it, placing it in a safe that also contained a nine-millimeter (9mm) Taurus PT92 handgun. At 7:00 p.m., Petrić's sister, Heidi Archer, arrived at the house with her husband. Petrić elected a bench trial.

Defense case

James Kersey represented Petrić as the defense attorney. Neither Kersey nor Petrić attempted to dispute the facts of the crime; Because of the enormous amount of stress put on him due to his severe infection and resultant spinal injury, Petrić was much more susceptible to being influenced by the game, not to mention his youth. Petrić, he claimed, was not in the right state of mind to understand the finality of shooting his parents. In other words, he had been playing violent video games so long that he did not realize that real-life death is permanent. The levels of video games can be replayed over and over again; killed and injured characters, including the player himself, return to their original states at every reset. Petrić, he continued, must have expected that his mother would eventually return to a healthy and normal state, having been immersed in virtual violence so long. Petrić is currently serving his sentence at Grafton Correctional Institution and will be eligible for parole in 2030.