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| Responders are seen after a shooting incident at a school in Zamboanga City, the Philippines, on Tuesday. — XINHUA/VNA Photo |
MANILA — Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla claimed that the perpetrator of the fatal Ateneo de Zamboanga University Junior High School shooting may have been influenced by the game Roblox.
“We still have to do (a) forensic examination on the gadgets of the shooter. We still don’t know with certainty,” Remulla said in a press briefing in Camp Crame on Wednesday.
But, it is with great degree of confidence that he was influenced by the game of Roblox again because of the manner in which he did it. Roblox in itself is not a dangerous game. It is the chat group that is inside it. That’s where radicalisation comes in, he added.
He cited that witnesses claimed to have seen the shooter supposedly playing Roblox, which previously figured in an alleged foiled attempt by seven teens to attack a Calabarzon school earlier this year.
Remulla also explained that the shooter, identified as a male Grade 8 student aged 14, had livestreamed the act on another website apart from his Facebook account.
“From the pattern that he used a live video and put it on a website, it seems the child was radicalised,” he explained.
“The child was a very exceptional student. Number one in his class, never had behavioral problems. We are going to go through all his gadgets to ascertain the facts,” he added.
Authorities are now investigating the website on which the shooter supposedly livestreamed the incident.
“It gives us a scenario as to his intent to show the world what he was doing. The version he was doing was akin to a video game, a first-person shooter. A camera was attached to his chest and he was livestreaming the incident,” Remulla further explained.
“In my view, he was recreating the scenario he saw on video games in real life. So, that’s the only realistic explanation we saw,” he added.
The developers of Roblox, in a joint statement with the Department of Information and Communication Technology last April, previously committed to bolstering security on the game by creating new account types to age-check children and provide age-appropriate content.
On the Apple App Store, as of this writing, Roblox is described as a “home to every kind of game, for every kind of player” with “high-octane racing games… (and) hardcore tactical shooters.” — PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ANN
