Britain's First "Web-Rage" Attack

brown-eyed slug writes "The BBC is reporting what is claimed to be Britain's first "web-rage" attack. A man drove seventy miles to assault his victim with a pick-axe handle after they exchanged insults in a Yahoo! chat room." From the article: "Det Cons Christopher Creagh, of the Metropolitan Police, said: 'This is the first instance of a web-rage attack.' Det Sgt Jean-Marc Bazzoni, of Essex Police, added the case demonstrates the importance of protecting one's identity on the internet. 'Mr Jones had posted pictures of his family on the web and had chatted to Gibbons on an audio link,' he said. 'It demonstrates how easily other users can put two and two together and also shows how children could also find themselves in danger.'"

In other news ...

no one here but us anonymous cowards ... oi.

That is why.....

That is why I do not give my home address here :-)...

Re:That is why.....

Think you're a smart guy, eh? Why I oughtta.... never mind... don't know where you live...

Re:That is why.....

Just as well you don't, Mr Johan F D Louwers
of 89 Newstraat,
De Bildt
NL 3732DJ

You never know what kind of freaks and stalkers and lunatics are roaming the net these days...

Re:more info

To be honest it is the address of my parents.

Soooo, it was a good idea to offer up even more information in response?

Okay class, this concludes today's example of Social Engineering.

Re:That is why.....

That's the combination on my briefcase!

Re:That is why.....

Four or five years ago, some clown on eBay ripped me off and I found him using only his first name and his eBay name, which meant a certain animal in French + a two-digit number, which I took to be his birth year. This year would have made him about 20 years old. I Googled the eBay name in English only sites and got a number of hits. On a discussion site, I found the same username with a university email address, which had a partial name. Interestingly enough, in the discussion group this guy used a certain phrase that, combined with his age, made me pretty sure that it was the same person. I Googled the university + partial name and got a few hits. One of them was the school newspaper and included a picture of the French Club with a listing of all of the names of the people in the photos.

I imagine he was very surprised when I emailed him a picture of himself at his university email addresss and demanded my money. Needless to say, I got my money back.

Re:That is why.....

Why is it creepy?

You could do exactly the same thing using paper resources if you had the time and patience. There were plenty of stalkers around before the internet reared it's head. I don't think there are really any more these days, simply a greater proportion of them doing it faster.

Sanity

This doesn't have as much to do with the internet as they'd want you to think, I mean the guy drove 70 miles with an axe, obviously he wasn't stable to begin with.

Re:Sanity

Crimes of passion do not have to happen instantaneously. Also, they are not saying it is a crime of passion, they are saying this is the first case (they know of) where a person got pissed at someone they met from the net, and took physical action towards that person. Stop making it sound like they are claiming the net is a bad thing.

Re:Sanity

It was probably driving around the M25 that got him so pissed off in the first place. I bet he just wanted to go and have a beer with the guy when he left home ;-)

Re:Sanity

Det Sgt Jean-Marc Bazzoni, of Essex Police, added the case demonstrates the importance of protecting one's identity on the internet.

"It demonstrates how easily other users can put two and two together and also shows how children could also find themselves in danger."

No, it demonstrate the importance of acting civilized and how people should stop acting like savages just because they are not in front of the person they are communicating with.

Re:Sanity

I agree. A sane person would of turned around after 30 miles.

Children

also shows how children could also find themselves in danger.

Fucking great, he pulled the "think of the children" line...expect politicians to get involved and new laws passed to "protect the children".

Won't somebody please think of the children?!?

"It demonstrates how easily other users can put two and two together and also shows how children could also find themselves in danger." ...which, in turn, demonstrates why children should not be allowed unfettered access to the Net. Of course, it's probably just easier to pass legislation than to watch what your kids are doing - that makes it somebody else's problem.

Re:Won't someone think of the children?

You're right. Sadly, misguided politicians use unfortunate incidents like this to hammer through legislation. This has less to do with the internet than one might think. Assault has been illegal long before the birth of the internet.

70 miles

He travelled 70 miles to Mr Jones' home in Clacton, Essex, and beat him up with a pickaxe handle in December 2005.

You've got to hand to the guy for travelling 70 miles just to beat someone up.

I can't wait for news about someone travelling to the other side of the globe just to beat someone up because they kept fragging them / stealing their gold / beat them double perfect in Street Fighter...

I have mixed feelings about this...

On one hand, I find it sad that a network with the potential to unit the world, and bring us all closer together became the catalyst for such a sick, frenzied and unnecessary attack.

On the other hand, I am happy that my TCP-enabled pickaxe handle may have a market.

Ax-handle control NOW!

Police report that this guy owns not just one, but several ax-handles! He's an ax-handle nut! I wish the ax-handle lobby would own up to the fact that these things are not just dangerous, but potentially DEADLY!

Effective ax-handle control legislation is long overdue! Think of the children!

Re:Ax-handle control NOW!

Police report that this guy owns not just one, but several ax-handles! He's an ax-handle nut! I wish the ax-handle lobby would own up to the fact that these things are not just dangerous, but potentially DEADLY!

Effective ax-handle control legislation is long overdue! Think of the children!

Look, nobody wants to take away axe handles from legitimate, country-side axe users. It's only the urban areas that don't need them. We just need to close all the loopholes at the farm shows and flea markets. The real problem, though, is the glorification of axe handle swinging in popular media. Because once people think it's OK to inappropriately use just one piece of wood, then our Home Depots and other lumber yards are no better than arms markets.

Dog bites man

"Psycho attacks man over perceived slight" is the dog bites man story no matter how you wrap it up for media consumption. The man bites dog story would be "Psycho drives 70 miles to clean man's snowed-in driveway with a shovel after an online exchange."

He's psychotic, what did you expect? Him to drive up with a bouquet of fresh flowers for the women of the family and a bottle of Dom Perignon for the gentlemen to savor over fine Cuban cigars?

This is one reason why I plan to live in the South as long as I live in America. Most of the South is still relatively sane. Someone comes at you with any sort of axe, ice pick, knife, etc. you're going to be hard-pressed to find a jury that will convict you for blowing their head off.

I read stories online all the time about youths beating up or murdering people in Britain and the police harassing the 50 year old Brit who asked them to just be quiet. Who are the psychos? The punk youths, the British cop and the institution he represents. I thought the definition of psychosis is a pathological inability to tell right from wrong, and last time I checked, state power harassing law-abiding British subjects set upon by violent punks is the definition of injustice--right and wrong!--making the British legal system technically psychotic.

Re:Dog bites man

As someone who suffers from Psychosis, you are off on your terminology. The word you are looking for is not Psychotic, which describes Psychosis, but Psychopathic. Psychopathy is the condition that can be generally described as a lack of a conscience. A Psychopath doesn't care if they hurt other people. They have a lack of ability to empathise with the pain of others.

As a Psychotic person, myself, I know what is right and wrong. And I do care about whether my actions hurt people. It's just sometimes one can become rather extremely disconnected from reality.

For more information, check out Wikipedia.

Also of note is that Psychopathic behaviour is very often part of the condition known as Antisocial Personality Disorder, which, if memory serves, is commonly called Sociopathy.

Wikipedia Article on Psychosis [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia Article on Psychopathy [wikipedia.org]
Wikipedia Article on Antisocial Personality Disorder [wikipedia.org]

Psycho with a big heavy stick

He's psychotic, what did you expect? [...] This is one reason why I plan to live in the South as long as I live in America. Most of the South is still relatively sane. Someone comes at you with any sort of axe, ice pick, knife, etc. you're going to be hard-pressed to find a jury that will convict you for blowing their head off.

If that story had taken place in the southern united states, the guy would have driven the 70 miles with his gun and blown the victim away when he opened the door.

When guns are illegal, only pickaxe handles are handy to psycho net ragers.

Not the first incident

I remember a story of someone killing another person because the victim sold a virtual sword of the killer.

Excellent...

I'm not happy about the fact that some nut went that far out of his way - and maintained his unreasoning rage for the best part of an hour - that this could happen.

All events like this are bad in themselves... but the more it happens, the more people might stop and think for a second before they do their utmost to cut someone to shreds, safe behind the anonymity of the internets.

The attacker was clearly a dick, but then I've little doubt that the victim was too. No, it doesn't vindicate it, but it does give me a vicious, guilty little flinch of pleasure.

Note to flamers: the interweb is full of games for bored, vicious little pillocks. Don't play one-up in chat.

Self Control

I'd really like to see a social psychologist comment on this incident - these kinds of "rage" attacks are definitely on the increase and my impression is that in Britain, we seem to be the worst of any nation for this.

Then look at the wider picture here, with binge drinking also increasing and parts of our city centres becoming virtual war-zones on weekend evenings and you begin to wonder whatever happened to self-discipline and restraint in our society. Even take violence at football games - yes, it's decreased here in the past 20 years but only because there are so many police involved in crowd control, no violence ever has the chance to break out.

I'm certain that advertising and the media is at the core of this - kids today are constantly pounded with messages of not being "cool" until they buy, use or wear certain brands of electronic devices, clothing or music. But then, where's the education from parents that their kids just cannot have everything they want right there on the spot?

Maybe I'm wearing "rose-tinted spectacles" but I go out to other European countries a lot, particularly Spain, and I don't hear or see any of these kinds of behaviours - go out in the city streets at night and it's always a lot of people, particularly families, just out having a good time.

This is a really sad incident and we should be ashamed that it happened here.

Bollocks

these kinds of "rage" attacks are definitely on the increase
WRONG
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.as p [crimestatistics.org.uk]
(And thats before taking Victorian London into account)

with binge drinking also increasing
LOL ! Getting shitfaced is obviously a new phenominon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Lane [wikipedia.org]

Even take violence at football games - yes, it's decreased here in the past 20 years but only because there are so many police
Nothing to do with the rise of MDMA in the late 80's & early 90's then?
http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v04n1/04122mdm.ht ml [maps.org]

Stop reading the News of the Screws / Daily Hate and get a grip.

And how is this different from the real world?

...the case demonstrates the importance of protecting one's identity on the internet

I think the case demonstrates that the internet is no different than the real world. Trade insults with a guy you just met (online or not) and he may be a violent person that will come over to your house with his buddy and kick your ass. I'm glad he wasn't killed and I hope he'll completely recover but I don't have too much sympathy.

Too many people use the supposed anonymity of the internet as an excuse to be asshats. Always remember...the other guy could be a bigger asshat.

First Incident of Web-Rage or...

First Incident of Web-Rage or the millionith (ish) incident of one Human going nuts and attacking another.

So, What's new?

New urban FACT

Every time you OMGWTF on the internet it bring an axe-wielding psychopath 70 miles closer

More detail

Bah, when I submitted this story I linked to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2409469, 00.html [timesonline.co.uk]

...where there is a lot more information on what happened than in the BBC article.

During the assault, Mr Jones's throat was cut from his Adam's apple to his ear, narrowly missing the jugular vein.

I blame violent video game legislation

What this man was lacking was a safe way to act out his aggressions on the person he was chatting with. And what do they call a chat application where you can bludgeon the other users with a blunt object? Deathmatch.

Sorry not "rage"

Rage is something different then this. You don't have coherent thought, your unable to speak. I'd really doubt you'd be able to drive 70 miles in a "rage" to kill someone.

This more "web-assholishness" which does exist but has been documented more then enough times.

In conclusion rage != being really angry.

Though I must admit he certainly "went the distance".

Ban chat rooms and pick axes!

Clearly the problem is that pick axes and chat rooms are too easy to access to the general public. It is madness that any person can just boot up their computer and access a chat room, or just walk into a hardware store and purchase a pick axe, with no sort of government supervision or licencing. It is undeniable that if chat rooms and pick axes were restricted the same way firearms are restricted now, then a brutal chat-room-pick-axe attacks like this would have never happened.

How anyone can look at this violent crime, and not support chat-room-control and pick-axe control is proof that they are brainwashed by the chat room industry and the pick-axe industry!

UK Nanny State

I suppose the UK will ban pick axe handles now. They've already banned certain kitchen knives and jsut about all guns. Next will be banning anger.

Re:I blame Britain's gun control

You do know that it goes both ways. He could have just as easily blown you away. In this case, both people are alive. That speaks more for gun control than against it.