Tyrone Spellman is a jerk.
Actually, "jerk" doesn't quite cover the guy who beat his 17 month old child to death after she accidentally knocked over his Xbox 360. He became so upset by a child too young to realize what she had done that he punched her in the face and literally threw her about the room. I'm probably going to have to spend a few hours coming up with a new insult for this guy, and it's probably going to take a few packs of smokes, a bottle of Mad Dog and a thesaurus full of swears.
Mr. Spellman's trial started recently in Philadelphia and the entire proceeding is the sort of thing that gives Jack Thompson a hard-on. Above and beyond the fact that almost every point actually having to do with gaming is mis-reported on in the courtroom, Mr. Spellman would have been a dangerous sicko whether he was playing GRAW or Hungry, Hungry Hippos. As usual, the media coverage seems to actually be trying to connect his playing video games with the fact that this guy decided to go smash in the head of a child. To wit, I present a quote from the article;
Spellman, 25, said he was playing one of Tom Clancy's "Ghost Recon" games - a violent combat epic - in a front bedroom of his family's Brewerytown home that Thursday morning, Sept. 7.
Does adding the phrase "a violent combat epic" actually add to the validity of this article? Do they actually believe the game somehow caused Tyrone to wig out and kill a child? The levels to which the media will sink to pin violence on the latest societal scapegoat have gone too far. If this was a less heinous crime, I'd like to say that they were as bad as the perpetrator, but, well, you can't really compete with the kind of scum who murders a kid.
NO!!!! You said his name..he will hound your website for eternity...well at least for a good while.
Honestly, having Jacky boy on this website would be a pretty big honor. That means D-Toid is OFFICIAL.
(I've been obsessed with that word ever since I started watching Rob & Big....)
Jacky's already been plastered all over Dtoid during the Bully trial.
Either way, Spellman was a baby killer way before he ever touched Tom Clancy, as Nex said.
Haha it was more so a joke..
Worthless parent, worthless journalist.
You need a licence to drive a car, have a television or a pet dog... But not so to have a child. Any incompetent, brutish little shit can have as many kids as they want, and fuck them up worse than their parents did to them.
Games don't make people violent. Shitty childhoods do.
The problem is that he just happened to be playing a game at the time. If she had turned off the TV during a movie, or shit in his basketball shoes, it'd be a different story. Does basketball cause violence? "Of course not, that's ludicrous!" they would say. But that's exactly the kind of reasoning people use. When's the last time a fight broke out a LAN party?
those games are based on war
jackal thompson should try to ban war
I couldn't give a toss about Jack Thompson, but what breaks my heart is the fact this guy brutally killed his own child. I hope they kill him in prison. The fact he's a gamer is an aside in my eyes. He's a baby killer. I hope he gets what he deserves.
I'm pretty sure that's a given, Sub.
The media is so quick to pin this right on the games he was playing it's obscene. I'm sure he would've done the same thing if his little girl had knocked over his stereo, or scratched his car.
A psycho is a psycho. The fact he was playing a game has nothing to do with it.
Jesus Christ . . . I just had a horrible thought. What if he left the mic on on his controller while he was doing all this?! Holy fuck, maybe people actually HEARD him doing this!
Excuse me. I feel sick to my stomach.
If the kid scratched up her father's car and the father killed her, then I'd guess we'd be banning cars right about now.
"Them thing's DANGEROUS!"
No matter how you look at it, the kid is dead and the father is 100% responsible. If the father couldn't contain his anger or be a responsible parent, then he shouldn't have had a kid or an Xbox 360 anyways. Regardless, he's a danger to everyone around him.
This guy Tyrone Spellman is an "adult" right? He's not some impressionable young mind being poisoned by the likes of Grand Theft Auto. Video games are completely irrelevant to this man behavior. I hope he dies from a rusty shiv to the stomach and the subsequent infection.
this is no reason to get all stabby. now if it was my wii sensor bar on the other hand, babys gon pay
apparently the sound that makes you punch infants is present in GRAW...
(lame Dane Cook reference)
what the fuck that bastard should have his dick cut off and feed it to a lion then cut off his fingers one by one then raped by a thousands elephant seriously i have never read a piece of news that angers me more this guys should not bne killed he should be tortue (worse than death)
...
This is just horrible beyond words. And then I read that his girlfriend or whatever is 8 months pregnant, so that means another child on the way. It's a good thing that this guy is going to be put away for a long time. He should be absolutely prohibited from ever SEEING the new child.
Sickening.
People like this shouldnt be parents, I mean come on who snaps everyday and kills there kid over an xbox.. I think this is a rare case were people like this guy maybe shouldnt play violent games, some people might disagree.
omfg
whats his gamer tag? I wanna send him bad feedback...
Ballistic90,
you're actually on to something with cars. automobile related accidents are one of the biggest killers. If the government wanted to do the best thing to protect us, it would build better roads and regulate driving and motor vehicles more. Not outlawing gambling or regulating violent games...
This guy is seriously f'ed up! Violence is caused in the brain, BY the brain. No game could ever create that in a man, although when i died playing Mario as a teenager, it did PROVOKE violence, (BUT NOT CAUSE IT!!!!) In this case, The child's innocent mistake caused it, although the man was obviously a danger, which was made immenently clear by his GodAwful response to the situayion. HANG HIM!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow. There are no words that describe what an incredibly pathetic person this guy is.
That said, since when does a Xbox 360 cost $600?
paging jack thompson..
Ok, not sure what's going on, but I've made several attempts to post to this thread, but I keep getting a flash of some error message, which lasts for less than a second, which isn't long enough for me to read.
Yet that one went through... WTF?
Okay, got a screen grab of the error:
"Warning: Header may not contain more than a single header, new line detected. in /usr/home/destructoid/public_html/elephant/site.phtml on line 113
Please click here to continue."
That flashes on a white background for maybe a quarter of a second, then returns to this page.
What the hell... okay, since I was able to post all of that shit, I tried redoing my original post, but then I got the same damned error again.
Gist: This guy = asshat. Jack Thompson = asshat. Xbox 360 = not to blame for this. Media = clueless as usual.
*whew*
"violent combat epic" - uhhhh, isn't that what is happening overseas in IRAQ!!!
Im OK,
Odd, we've never seen that error before; what browser are you using?
This aint right.
Really Beating your child like a ragdoll may be fun to some psychotic people,but to a normal like us think just setting you console upright and putting the child back in the crib will do fine.
Amen, Teamjesus. I agree. I eagerly await reading a report of this guy getting his in prison.
If you interupt him while he's playing Dance Dance Revolution, he starts dancing on your skull.
Guys, I believe that it is obvious that video games are definately to blame here. If he didn't play video games, he wouldn't own an xbox 360. If he didn't own an xbox 360, his daughter would've never knocked it over. And if she never knocked it over, she would never have been killed. If she never had been killed, I wouldn't be here reading this article and would instead be reading some other random news article that shows that people can somehow be evil asshole without the aid of videogames...
First, WHAT A SICK BASTARD!!!! Only sick bastards would go off and kill a baby (or anyone else for that matter) because they broke their video game....
Second, I HATE THE GENERAL MEDIA!!!! They will put every twist they can to make their money. They know video game violence has been a HUGELY controversial topic for years now and they just won't give up.
Well, Volcanon it's already been stated that this man had already beaten his baby before. Also it's quite obvious he suffers from a mental condition. The "breaking of the 360" was just the last straw I guess.
Games dont kill people, neither do guns. People kill people. I think they should ban stupidity and moronism, make it punishable by exile (or sterilisation maybe).
I forgot to second mh371298: why does the media jump on violence in games where one american child is killed 'by game violence', while thousands have been killed in Irak (for very disputable reasons)? Are Iraqi childs less important?
Answer for the mass media: yes, one American (or western) child killed in insane rage is more important than 1000 little Arabs starved, bombed and orphaned.
Stalin was right: one man dead is murder, 1000 dead is a statistic (only he said a million...)
There's a huge difference between jail and prison folks. This man here is going to prison. People who either abuse, molest, or harm a child in anyway get messed up by other prisoners way worse than any of the others. Serial shooters (who dont kill children) show up and look to the cho-mo's and are like "wow, you're fucked up." Take it from a guy whos been forced to watch "prison footage" while locked up in juvenile detention multiple times.
This guy is the biggest loser in the history of the world.
Who hits a kid? There is nothing that should cause that. Much less a fucking game system, fuck buy another, shit let her knock it over and break it three times before you even yell, The third time would at least be funny, shit she'll 1 1/2 old, what a fucking D-bag,
can u spell anger managment
Some Media types need to be punched in the face and thrown about a room. Our favorite medium Demands more respect than this.
Also that man needs to be butt raped to death in prison for what he did to his poor daughter, Some people.namly him should not procreate. I Chose not to have kids so my kids wouldn't have to deal with Douches like him or the kids of douches like him that did survive.
I fucking hate that guy, I agree with everything bad you say about him, I got so pissed of reading the first paragraph.
And then when the press / court whoever tried to turn it onto the games, they have not got a clue, they do this all the time. Everyone knows what to expect when buying a game, they have ratings on and everything but I dont feel like going out killing people after playing a round of GOW. And abyway games like GRAW are about combating terrorism anyway!
I hate that guy, and I hate people that try and make great games sound like a danger to society.
Even worse is thae fact that some news sites report all the kid did was pull out the power cord, and then he tried to cover up the crime to his wife / girlfriend.
"Tyrone Spellman, 25, struck the 17-month-old toddler and threw her across the room last Thursday, police said. When the child's mother returned home to the 1500 block of North 29th Street, Spellman told her the girl was sleeping."
I think that was in the Inquirer
This man is scum. I hope that he knocks over Bubba's XBox, so that he can feel what it's like to get popped in the face...Then raped.
Kill him please. After he's dropped the soap and had his ass raped. Fucking scum.
peple r fucked up, idc if she knoked down a 360,wii, and ps3 i wouldent beat the kid to deth
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