DAYTON — A Washington Courthouse man was once a video game partner with David Katz, the Baltimore man who is accused of fatally shooting two people and wounding several others at a video game tournament in Florida on Sunday.
“He was one of my partners back in 2012, and to be honest with you, he was always pretty quiet,” said Tim Wightman of Washington Courthouse. “I never thought anything like that would have come of it.”
Wightman was trying to watch Sunday's tournament online from home when he realized that something was wrong, he said.
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“I tuned in to somebody else’s stream and started seeing posts and stuff, and that’s when I got on Twitter and saw everything that was going on,” Wightman said. “At that point you hope for the best.”
At Game Swap, a local video game store and arcade, gamers said Sunday’s shooting has shaken up the competitive gaming community. So much so that many of them feel that it gives video gamers a bad reputation.
"It makes me incredibly sad that somebody would ever get that upset that they feel their only recourse is to take another's life," said Natalie Claude.
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Still, gamers say they don’t want the shooting to stop people from meeting and having a good time at video game tournaments.
“Unfortunately, we live in a time (in which) people live in a lot of fear of a lot of different things,” Claude said. “When things like this happens it opens up those fears and anxieties.”