A 13-year-old boy got the scare of his life when a middle-aged man he trash-talked in Black Ops tracked him down and “throttled” him.
46-year-old Mark Bradford of the U.K. was getting a rough ride in his online Call of Duty: Black Ops match. The beatdown was bad enough, but it was the inevitable trash-talk from the punk kid who was kicking his ass that really drove him around the bend. But when it finally got to be too much, he didn’t take off his headset and stop playing. He went looking for the kid.
And he found him. The boy was at a friend’s house not far from Bradford’s single-room apartment; Bradford went to the house, entered the room where they were playing, grabbed his tormenter around the throat and started choking him. Fortunately, the boy’s mother pulled Bradford away before he could be seriously hurt, although he was still left with scratches and reddening around his neck.
“I was just sat playing. We’d had a bit of a joke and then he stormed in and grabbed me,” the boy, who cannot be identified, told the Daily Mail. “I didn’t know what was going on.”
“It’s pathetic that a grown man would attack a defenseless child like this,” his mother added. “If you can’t handle losing to a child then you shouldn’t be playing games.”
Bradford, who has apparently suffered from mental health issues in the past, claimed that he just snapped after playing the game all day. “He was baiting me and baiting me and just would not shut up,” he said. “He went on and on and I just lost it. I hold my hands up, I lost the plot. In a moment of madness I went round to his house. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
Bradford was apparently able to find the boy because he’s a “loosely-connected friend” of the family. He also claimed that he’s seen him since and apologized for the incident, and that they still play online together. “He’s actually a decent kid,” he said.
Bradford pleaded guilty to one count of assault by beating. The court requested a full background report before sentencing, which is set to take place on October 24.
