By Tim Binnall
An online video game dispute took a bizarre turn when one of the players allegedly flew from New Jersey to Florida and then attacked his rival with a hammer. "This is a weird one," Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper reportedly mused as he detailed the strange case at a press conference on Monday. He went on to explain that the incident came about when the suspect, Edward Kang, got into an argument with the unnamed victim while they were both playing the online game AcheAge. While the precise nature of the dispute is uncertain, the conflict was apparently considerable enough that it spawned a rather jaw-dropping reaction.
According to the sheriff, late last week, Kang flew from his home in Newark, New Jersey to Jacksonville, Florida, near where the victim lives. The aggrieved gamer then purchased a hammer and flashlight from a hardware store and broke into his rival's home at around 2 AM on Sunday. In a chilling bit of irony, the victim was playing a video game in his bedroom at the time and, when he went to take a bathroom break, he encountered Kang "with a hammer raised in the air in an anticipated strike position." A struggle subsequently ensued before the man's stepfather heard the commotion, intervened, and held down the angry intruder until police arrived on the scene.
Both young men needed to be medical attention as a result of the scuffle and, upon being discharged from the hospital, Kang was arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder as well as armed burglary. When questioned by police, the New Jersey man simply stated that the victim was "a bad person online," though offered little other insight as to what compelled him to travel nearly 1,000 miles to confront his rival. While in custody, Kang amazingly asked cops how much jail time he might receive for the wild attack to which Sheriff Leeper amusingly replied at the press conference "I would say, 'Mr. Kang, it's going to be a long time before you play video games again."
As of now, authorities are uncertain as to how Kang figured out where his rival lived, though they used the case as a cautionary tale with regards to interacting with strangers online. That said, they remain flummoxed by the entire strange affair with Leeper observing that "Some things make you say 'Hmm.' Some things, you just can't make up. There are some things that make you say 'What in the world was he thinking?' And there are some things that make you say 'You're not going to believe this.' This case makes you say all four of those."