Video games don't kill people, hitmen hired by people who play way too many video games kill people. That is, unless said hitman is actually an undercover cop, planted by the same parents you paid him to kill for taking away your Playstation.

That's exactly what happened to Maryland resident, Cory Ryder. The 16-year-old's parents confiscated his Playstation and revoked his TV-watching privileges, due to poor grades and bad behavior. So, in typical "kids contract the darndest things," Ryder plotted the murder of his parents, hiring someone to put the hit on his folks in return for his father's pickup truck. Meanwhile, his mother set up a sting.

On June 2nd, a mother of one of Cory's friends took him to a hotel to meet up with the hitman, who, it turns out, was actually the undercover cop hired by his mother.

The Times of London give some background on Ryder:

He walked out of lessons at Spring Ridge Middle School in Lexington Park, smashed a fire extinguisher case and then broke into the county fairgrounds, where he vandalised property. A judge sentenced him to supervised probation and his parents attended no less than 36 meetings with the authorities about him. But Cory dropped out of school and then, after stealing $45 (£22) from his sister's piggy bank, had a fight with his mother, which led to him being kicked out of home. He has since told officials that he was upset about being thrown out of the house and that he felt pressured to talk to the man in the hotel.

Ryder, for his part, insisted that he wasn't actually going to go through with the whole kooky murder thing. His trial is scheduled to begin today.