Marine
01-29-2003, 5:05am
He lost a violent cyberwar game known as Counterstrike and then shot the victor.
Police now think that losing the game and being ridiculed about it triggered the Coquitlam Internet cafe shooting Jan. 18 that cost 17-year-old Christian Kwee his life.
The suspect apparently was not only a bad loser but also a violent person illegally packing a gun, Coquitlam RCMP said yesterday.
"Whoever he [the suspect] is, he is very violent and no doubt in possession of illegal firearms," said spokesman Cpl. Pierre Lemaitre as police appealed for more witnesses to come forward.
"What we have heard is that there was something that trigged the anger in the other person.
"Information coming to us is that he [the victim] was a winner and somebody else was a loser and there were apparently words exchanged -- perhaps in written form."
Counterstrike is a violent shoot-'em-up game that can be played on the Internet between players sitting a world away or in the same room.
The contest is between two teams or two players, one acting as organized terrorists and the other as a counter-terrorist force.
After the Jan. 18 game at the ProGamers Internet Cafe on North Road, Kwee was apparently dragged into a corner inside the cafe and beaten up by three youths of Vietnamese ancestry, police said.
The youths later returned and administered another beating before one of the youths shot Kwee once in the head.
Daniel Rosu, a friend of Kwee's older brother, told The Province earlier that the incident may have been precipitated by the initials of the victor of one Counterstrike game which Kwee had entered on the computer and which his rival interpreted as a sign of disrespect.
Internet cafe owner Harry Law says the shooting "could happen anywhere," adding: "There's nothing I can do about it."
Police agreed that what happened at the cafe was the result of a combination of factors.
"There are many Internet cafes throughout the Lower Mainland and that is not the normal way the games end," said Lemaitre.
He said RCMP are thinking of releasing a composite drawing of the suspects in case the leads they now have do not result in an arrest or identification of the suspects.
There were at least 30 others in the cafe when the shooting occurred, but most of them quickly left the premises before police arrived.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/news/story.asp?id=11EEC76F-D53B-49EF-81E0-01FBE9156CFD
Police now think that losing the game and being ridiculed about it triggered the Coquitlam Internet cafe shooting Jan. 18 that cost 17-year-old Christian Kwee his life.
The suspect apparently was not only a bad loser but also a violent person illegally packing a gun, Coquitlam RCMP said yesterday.
"Whoever he [the suspect] is, he is very violent and no doubt in possession of illegal firearms," said spokesman Cpl. Pierre Lemaitre as police appealed for more witnesses to come forward.
"What we have heard is that there was something that trigged the anger in the other person.
"Information coming to us is that he [the victim] was a winner and somebody else was a loser and there were apparently words exchanged -- perhaps in written form."
Counterstrike is a violent shoot-'em-up game that can be played on the Internet between players sitting a world away or in the same room.
The contest is between two teams or two players, one acting as organized terrorists and the other as a counter-terrorist force.
After the Jan. 18 game at the ProGamers Internet Cafe on North Road, Kwee was apparently dragged into a corner inside the cafe and beaten up by three youths of Vietnamese ancestry, police said.
The youths later returned and administered another beating before one of the youths shot Kwee once in the head.
Daniel Rosu, a friend of Kwee's older brother, told The Province earlier that the incident may have been precipitated by the initials of the victor of one Counterstrike game which Kwee had entered on the computer and which his rival interpreted as a sign of disrespect.
Internet cafe owner Harry Law says the shooting "could happen anywhere," adding: "There's nothing I can do about it."
Police agreed that what happened at the cafe was the result of a combination of factors.
"There are many Internet cafes throughout the Lower Mainland and that is not the normal way the games end," said Lemaitre.
He said RCMP are thinking of releasing a composite drawing of the suspects in case the leads they now have do not result in an arrest or identification of the suspects.
There were at least 30 others in the cafe when the shooting occurred, but most of them quickly left the premises before police arrived.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/news/story.asp?id=11EEC76F-D53B-49EF-81E0-01FBE9156CFD