An 11-year-old boy who purchased a second-hand copy of Grand Theft Auto V discovered that the game had a hidden bonus in the form of a bag of meth.
The packet of drugs was hidden within the manual that came with the used copy of GTA V, which was purchased from the Capital West, Tallahassee branch of GameStop in Florida.
Packet Of Meth Found In Used Copy Of 'GTA V'
The incident was detailed by Kayla McAllister, the mother of the 11-year-old boy, on a Facebook post. According to her, she and her son visited GameStop on Sunday noon to trade in old video games. They then bought a second-hand copy of GTA V.
While the game was installing, the boy decided to open its manual. That was when he discovered a small bag with a white substance hidden inside its pages. Fortunately for the family, the boy decided to go straight to his mother to ask what the packet's contents were.
A copy of the police report that was filed regarding the incident narrated that officers were sent to the McAllister home to do a field test on the white substance in the small zip lock bag. The officers shortly confirmed that the packet's contents were positive for methamphetamine, or meth.
McAllister, understandably, was livid.
"Clearly the game was not properly checked when it was traded in and because of the carelessness I could have lost a child," McAllister wrote. She could not imagine what would have happened if her son decided to explore the contents of the bag on his own, or if the packet was instead found by her three-year-old daughter.
"She could have died, and I would have spent the rest of my life wondering where it even came from," McAllister said.
Check Second Hand Items Before Buying
For readers who think the story sounds familiar, that is because a similar incident happened in Louisiana in September 2016. Another 11-year-old boy purchased a second-hand copy of a video game from a GameStop branch, and like McAllister's son, found a bag of meth hidden inside.
The case of déjà vu made McAllister even angrier, as she simply could not believe that GameStop would let such a thing happen again.
The alarming incident contains several red flags, starting from the fact that whoever placed the bag of meth inside the copy of GTA V thought that the inside of a video game case is a good hiding spot for drugs. GameStop then failed to spot the packet of meth inside the game's manual when it was sold to one of its stores, and then a mother decided to purchase the ESRB-18 game for her 11-year-old son.
To avoid being involved in such an incident, customers should thoroughly inspect all second-hand items that they want to buy, not just video games, before finalizing the purchase. It might seem farfetched that such an incident would happen again, but that was the feeling the first time that it happened, and here we are again with a second time.
