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Wellington teen Daniel Petric gets 23 years for killing mom, shooting dad
Elyria- Daniel Petric, the Wellington teenager who claimed to be addicted to video games, was sentenced to at least 23 years in prison Tuesday for killing his mother and shooting his father after they forbade him from playing the game Halo 3.
Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge ripped the games' violence and addictive qualities. In the days before the shooting, Petric, 17, played the game as much as 18 hours a day.
"I feel confident that if there weren't such things as violent video games, I wouldn't know Daniel Petric," Burge said.
The youth shot his mother, Susan, 43, and father, Mark, 47, Oct. 20, 2007. Prosecutors said he told his parents he had a surprise for them and to close their eyes. Then he pulled the trigger.
Afterward, Petric, then 16, tried to make it appear as if the shooting were a murder-suicide by placing the gun in his father's hand, authorities said.
Burge convicted Petric in January of aggravated murder and attempted aggravated murder after hearing the trial without a jury. The youth could not be sentenced to death because he was not an adult at the time of the shootings.
Mark Petric told Burge that his family has forgiven Daniel and asked the judge to be lenient.
"I can't count the number of times that he said, 'Dad, I miss Mom,' " Mark Petric said. "He still doesn't understand how he did something so terrible."
He stressed that his son needs help dealing with the guilt and remorse that he feels.
"He is not a throwaway kid," said Petric, the pastor at New Life Assembly of God.
Anthony Cillo, an assistant Lorain County prosecutor, said Mark Petric's words Tuesday were different from his interview with sheriff's deputies a month after the shooting.
That's when the father called his son a pathological liar who was excellent at manipulating people....
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