9. Joshua Cooke: I Was in the Matrix
Via SecretsOffTheSire & TheDailyMail
That was actually a defense plea entered by more than one individual who thought killing was okay, since they weren’t really in the real world the time they did it!
The 1991 Keanu Reeves starrer The Matrix garnered quite the number of fans and a cult following – the Net was rife with discussions and debates, and many people started having delusions that the Matrix was real. And even years after the movie and its sequels were over and done with, Joshua Cooke seemed to believe that it was all very, very true.
In 2003, the then 19-year-old Joshua shot his adoptive parents in cold blood, and then had a Coke in his room while he waited for the police to arrive. He later told the media that he was in a dark place when he committed the murders and just wanted his life to end, and thinking that he was in The Matrix, trapped by everyone, he decided to kill his parents too. He was awarded a 40-year sentence for the murder and no Neo-like following.
8. Barry Loukaitis: The School Copycat Spree
Via Youtube & Pinterest
School shootings are not limited to just a couple of incidents. Much has been made of America’s penchant for guns, and the American teen’s love for shooting off, literally, in their schools. From 1983 to 2008 – there were at least 50 school shootings throughout the US of A, resulting in many a death and far more tragedies.
There’s a scene in the movie The Basketball Diarieswhere a heroin-high Leonardo DiCaprio dreams of shooting his classmates in the classroom, dressed in a black trench coat. This became even more notorious when in 1996, shooter Barry Loukaitis, aged all of 14 years, barged into his classroom wearing a black trench coat and opened fire on his classmates with a pistol and a rifle – killing three in total, a teacher and two fellow students. Clinically depressed and also bullied in school, Barry is said to have thought that going on a spree would be fun. He was sentenced to serve two life sentences and an additional 205 years in prison.
An even darker incident happened in 1999 when students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 and injured another 23 before they killed themselves in Columbine High School, Colorado. As Pink Floyd said it, ‘We don’t need no education…’
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