Recently, we reported police findings on the case of Sulejman Talovic, an 18-year-old Bosnian refugee who walked into the Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City, Utah and went shooting into the crowd, killing five and wounding four. The police never found any evidence that violent video games may have influenced Talovic. In fact, they never even found any computer game or video game system in Talovic's home.

But now, another lead surfaced: Talovic's friend, Enes Kadic (left pic), claims that his friend Sulejman did play computer games. Kadic, who went to seventh grade with Talovic, said that "combat games, fighting games, Super Mario..." are the sort of games that Talovic liked to play. Talovic also liked to watch movies with violence, his friend said. "He liked watching fighting movies. He liked watching those fist-fighting movies and movies where they shoot each other. He liked watching those type of movies," he added.

According to Kadic, Talovic was quiet and not very talkative. He kept mostly to himself and didn't leave his house after school.  At least once a week, though, Kadic would convince his shy friend to watch movies at his house or play video games at Talovic's house.

This new evidence leaves us all out in the open. Still, the fact that Talovic did play computer games is a poor indication that Talovic was convinced to shoot people because of gaming influence. His eight-grade math teacher at Hillside Intermediate School, Virginia Lee, said that Talovic was just a young man who wanted to be social, to belong.

Talovic's friend Kadic says that he still cannot believe it was his friend who did the shooting claiming that "it's pretty crazy to me he did that. He's the last person on Earth I thought would do that." Talovic may have been any one of us, and we do feel sorry for his victims.

The gunman might have had his reasons for going postal that day, yet must we always point blame on the gaming industry? After all, we've never heard of anybody else going on a shooting rampage after a round of playing Super Mario...

An 18-year-old teenager walked into a Utah shopping mall this week and shot nine people, killing five and wounding four. The suspect, a Bosnian immigrant named Sulejman Talovic, walked into the Trolley Square shopping mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, armed with a .38-caliber pistol, a shotgun, a backpack full of ammunition, and fired blindly into the crowd. The FBI said that there was no reason to believe that the suspect was motivated by religious extremism or terrorism.

Talovic lived in a tiny ranch house with his family; parents Suljo and Sabira Tolavic and three younger sisters. Neighbors describe the lanky Talovic as a loner who's always dressed in black. The Talovic family fled Bosnia for Utah in 1998. Sulejman's aunt, Ajka Omerovic, in retaliation to people tying their religion to her nephew's acts said, "we are Muslims, but we are not terrorists."

Citizens freely trade their views on the issue. It must be remembered that throughout the years, the issue of teenage gunfiring has stirred up some quite contrasting opinions. Outspoken citizens have expressed their concern, also, that the issue might be used by some politically-inclined individuals to advance their agenda.

Some gamers and non-gamers alike are only happy to put out that the blame must not be placed on the computer game industry and on computer games, but rather, on the suspects themselves. The gaming community now holds its breath over a possible barrage of blame to be poured on their industry.

The Salt Lake Tribune's Rebecca Walsh used her column to examine Salt Lake City mall shooter, Sulejman Talovic's motives for executing such a violent act. Walsh writes:

Others speculate that Talovic played violent video games. Attorney Jack Thompson, who is lobbying Utah lawmakers to punish those who provide games that make child’s play out of murder and mayhem, sent an e-mail to reporters with the headline: "Salt Lake City Teen Probably Trained on Grand Theft Auto Video Game." That rumor was stated as fact Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Unfortunately, the ace-attorney's assertions prove to be false for this particular case. GamePolitics alerts all of us that a later February 15th report on Salt Lake tribune says:

Salt Lake City police... have not discerned a motive... With the permission of Talovic's parents, detectives searched their home but did not take any computers or video games...

There's more confirmation on this as Salt Lake City's Desert News reports that Police Chief Chris Burbank officially rules out video games. The report says:

For instance, detectives as of Friday had found no evidence that violent video games may have influenced Talovic. In fact, Talovic did not even own a computer or a video-game system, Burbank said.

Having said all this to you folks, we'd like to ask: Why is it that with every high-profile youth-involved act of violence, videogames are always looked at? Nevermind the ace-attorney that a lot of you would love to despise. Let's keep him out of this. Let's just look at the rest of the elements in the equation. Why is it that when something like this happens, videogames are always considered?

Is this telling us anything about how the gaming community conducts itself? Is this indicative of how the rest of society sees things? We'd love to hear your take on this. But, as always, please keep things civil.

Oh, and before we leave this to you folks, kudos to the SLCPD for their superb job at handling the situation.