Christian Kwee was an average 17-year-old from the suburbs. He wasn"t brilliant at high school, but he was hoping to get into college. The Grade 12 student, however, had a talent for playing video games, and loved to hang out with friends perfecting his skills.
When Mr. Kwee died last Saturday, it was in an Internet café. Police believe the violence on the video screen may have tragically spilled into the room. Witnesses say he was shot to death because he was too good -- murdered by someone he had just beaten at the popular game Counter-Strike.
"The hardest part to comprehend," RCMP Corporal Pierre LeMaitre said, "is that the victim was just a young man out with friends, enjoying himself early in the evening -- at 7:30 p.m. -- and he was a victim of this kind of violence."
Mr. Kwee"s death has drawn attention to the darker side of Internet cafés and violent computer games. "It seems that something from the imagination has been taken to the next level and made into reality," Cpl. LeMaitre said. The young men who were defeated by Mr. Kwee may have been so wound up that they crossed the threshold between imagination and reality, he said.