Story By: Georgina Jadikovska, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash

A court case involving an video game addict who allegedly sneaked into his neighbour’s house and murdered her while severely injuring her toddler son has been adjourned so experts can investigate the cause of his “PC game madness”.

The trial started on Monday against gardening assistant Dominik Schreiber, 21, who sneaked into his 27-year-old neighbour Michelle J.’s ground floor property through a window and stabbed her 41 times while she was asleep in November 2020.

Schreiber reportedly spent hours playing his favourite online game “Avakin Life”.

The court heard that his avatar with black and gold wings dominated his life, and as time went by he spent more and more in the virtual world, before suddenly starting to hear voices telling him to do things, according to German newspaper Bild.

The court heard that at first, it was only in the game, but slowly, it shifted over into real life and started to happen all the time, still according to Bild.

Then, finally, in November 2020, he heard voices telling him to kill his family, but he could not because he reportedly love them too much and so instead he allegedly broke into the neighbour’s house at night to carry out the brutal killing.

After the incident, Schreiber allegedly sent a message to an online friend on WhatsApp saying “I killed two people” along with images of the crime, believing he had murdered the victim’s son as well.

The friend then raised the alarm with six police officers who broke into the flat after hearing Jason crying for his dead mother and found him seriously injured with multiple stab wounds.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Essen charged the suspect with murder, attempted murder, and grievous bodily harm.

During the trial which began in the Essen District Court on Monday (3rd May), the defendant confessed to the killing.

He said: “I was only following orders because the voice told me to do something bad. I had to see what it looks like when someone dies.”

Schreiber’s lawyer, Hans Reinhart, 60, said: “My client is schizophrenic, he wasn’t himself during the act, he thought it was someone else who stabbed the victims. The voices even ordered him to kill his parents and sister. But he couldn’t because he loved them too much.”

According to him “the motive probably lies in his world of virtual role-playing games, he heard voices and he had to obey.”

Investigators found that he had created avatars in order to have sex with other characters online.

Experts will now evaluate Schreiber’s alleged “PC game madness”, as German newspaper Bild termed it, and its role in the crime.