Man flies 1,000 miles to Florida to attack player over fantasy video game, cops say
A dispute that started in a fantasy video game ended in the real world when a man flew from New Jersey to Florida and attacked another player with a hammer, authorities said.
Edward Kang, 20, is charged with attempted second-degree murder and armed burglary with a mask, according to the Nassau County Sheriff’s Office.
His attorney information wasn’t available in court records as of June 25.
Kang left his home in New Jersey on Thursday, June 20, and told his mom he was going to Florida to visit a friend he had met while playing a video game, investigators said in an arrest affidavit.
The men had never met in person, but they knew each other through ArcheAge, an online fantasy game, Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said in a news conference broadcast by WTLV-WJXX . The sheriff compared the game to World of Warcraft.
Kang boarded a red-eye flight on Delta from Newark to Jacksonville, nearly 1,000 miles away, and arrived early the next morning, according to Leeper.
He took an Uber to a hotel in Fernandina Beach and bought a hammer at an ACE hardware store, the sheriff said.
Then at around 2 a.m. on Sunday, June 23, he put on a mask and went to the other player’s home, which was unlocked, according to deputies.
At that time, the victim got up to use the bathroom, and he opened the door to his room and found Kang “standing with a hammer raised in the air in an anticipated strike position,” deputies said.
Kang hit him on the head with the hammer, and the man struggled to fight him off as he screamed for help, alerting his stepfather, deputies said.
The stepfather rushed in, and together the two men restrained Kang until police arrived, according to deputies. The victim had “severe head wounds” that were non-life-threatening, and he received staples at the hospital, deputies said.
Kang said he attacked the man because, “he is a bad person online,” officials said. He also asked deputies how much time he would get for assault and breaking and entering, investigators said.
In a recorded and later translated conversation between Kang and his mother, she asked if he intended to kill the other man, and Kang said no, deputies said.
ArcheAge announced it would be shutting down its servers in Europe and North America on June 27, citing that it could no longer provide players with the ideal massively multiplayer online role-playing game experience.
Fernandina Beach is about a 35-mile drive northeast from downtown Jacksonville.