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Man Who Fired Nine Bullets Over PlayStation 4 Sale Convicted

Published on: February 25, 2017 at 11:38 AM
By Jovi Figueroa

A man finally gets justice three years after he was attacked over a PlayStation 4 sale.

A Shelby County Criminal Court jury convicted, on Thursday, a 27-year-old man who shot another man over a heated PlayStation 4 sale, Fox 13 reports. The convicted, Develle Johnson, was found guilty for employment of a firearm in commission of a dangerous felony and attempted voluntary manslaughter.

Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich told Local Memphis Friday that Johnson was convicted of voluntary manslaughter after the incident on August 31, 2014, when he shot the victim nine times.

Johnson and the victim agreed to meet at Camelot Manor Apartments in Southeast Memphis after the victim advertised a PlayStation 4 sale online. When the two couldn’t agree on a price for the PlayStation 4 unit, Johnson opened fire and hit the seller nine times in the chest and stomach with a pistol.

The seller of the PlayStation 4 also tried to fire his gun in retaliation but was only able to shoot Johnson once in the chest. The victim suffered major injuries but the attack was not fatal, and he pulled through.

The conviction of Johnson only came almost three years after the original incident took place, but retribution couldn’t come too late. An accomplice to Johnson, who is suspected of aiding and abetting the convicted, is still awaiting trial. According to WREG Memphis , a third accomplice to the PlayStation 4 sale mishap was never identified.

Develle Johnson will be sentenced next month by Judge Glenn Wright.

This PlayStation 4 sale-gone-wrong is the not the first to grace the US headlines in the last years since PlayStation 4 skyrocketed to success. In fact, several other PlayStatation 4 sale incidents involving firearms were recorded throughout the US, putting back gun rights and regulations on the heat radar.

In 2014, a fatal PlayStation 4 incident took place in Roswell, Georgia, where the man selling his PlayStation 4 was shot in the chest after he refused to succumb to a robbery.

Huffington Post reported that the 28-year-old victim, Daniel John Zeitz, met up with a couple after an online advertisement of a PlayStation 4 sale on Craigslist.

The couple, a 20-year-old man named Nathaniel Vivian and his 16-year-old girlfriend Kayla Dixon, met Zeitz in an apartment parking lot and tried to grab the PlayStation 4 towards their car. When Zeitz resisted, Vivian’s girlfriend pulled her.25 caliber handgun and sent a fatal shot to Zeitz’s chest. According to reports, the couple’s 16-month-old baby was even sitting in the car when the robbery-homicide took place.

New York Daily News reported that Dixon would be sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty.

Even earlier, in 2013, a same murder and attempted robbery incident over a PlayStation 4 sale was reported by NBC Bay Area . The victim, Ikenna Uwakah, was also meeting up with a potential PlayStation 4 buyer after agreeing to meet through online correspondence when he was shot.

Onyebuchi Uwakah, the victim’s father, told San Francisco police that his son was with his girlfriend when the suspect, Ronnie Collins, charged to steal the PlayStation 4 and fired multiple shots at Ikenna. When Collins fled the scene, Ikenna’s girlfriend drove him to Bayshore Boulevard, where he was taken by paramedics to San Francisco General Hospital. Ikenna did not survive.

Ikenna’s murder in 2013 happened just weeks after the PlayStation 4 first released, that’s why the demand for the console was at its peak. Ikenna was only one of the few resellers at the Bay Area who tried to take advantage of limited PlayStation 4 supply and sold PlayStation 4 units marked up from its original retail price.

Gamers line up at PlayStation 4 launch [Image by Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images]
Gamers line up for PlayStation 4 launch [Image by Ben A. Pruchnie/Getty Images]

Local police advises buyers who transact with people online to always bring a companion when doing sale transactions, especially concerning huge sales such as PlayStation 4 units. It is also wise to conduct the transaction in a public, more neutral area like a coffee shop, to avoid such mishaps.

[Featured Image by Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images]

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