An East Los Angeles family is preparing a funeral for their 16 year old son who died earlier this week after getting high using a PlayStation 4.
This latest generation of video game consoles may have cost the Sanchez family the ultimate price. Deborah and Doug Sanchez lost their son after he overdosed on chemicals found in PlayStation 4s. The 16 year old boy is believed to have ground up the mother board of a PlayStation 4 console he received for Easter, then after melting the chunks of plastic and metal injected them into a vein between his toes.
“It’s the damnedest thing,” explains Kandy Steiner, an emergency room technician at one of Los Angeles’s area hospitals. “Ever since the release of the new Xbox and PlayStation game systems we’ve seen more and more kids come through our doors addicted to smoking, snorting or injecting ground up pieces of these game consoles.”
The fad is believed to have started in Brazil when last December a video appeared on YouTube with instructions on how to disassemble, grind up, and abuse a PlayStation 4. The video alleges that chemicals in the PlayStation 4 mother board contains a variety of potent and illegal substances including cocaine, methamphetamine and a synthetic compound similar to heroine.
The Gaming Free Press consulted with an electrical engineer named “Zilog80” on an internet forum who told us the following:
“While game console motherboards like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One may contain harmful chemicals such as lead and mercury, it’s very unlikely they contain any illicit street drugs.”
[UPDATE: Since commenting on the controversy “Zilog80” has received several death threats in the comments section of the original Brazilian YouTube video which has since been pulled.]
If anything, none of this matters to the Sanchez family. They have since started a Kickstarter fund to raise awareness to what happened to their son, and to replace the food processor he destroyed when he ground up his PlayStation 4 motherboard.
