As the Pokémon TCG bubble stubbornly refuses to burst, we’ve reported on plenty of examples of fights breaking out between scalpers and collectors trying to get their hands on new cards to sell, but so far these have been examples of fisticuffs. This weekend, in an Indianapolis parking lot, a man was shot in a dispute over the trading card game.
According to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, just before 7 p.m. on Saturday April 11, an emergency call was received reporting a man had been attachked in a Kroger store parking lot. WISHTV‘s News 8 reports that when officers arrived, “they found a man in a parking lot suffering from gunshot wounds.”
The site quotes an eye witness saying, “I was coming out of the grocery store. I got into my car and I heard two gentlemen that were in an altercation. I looked over and it was a Black gentleman and a Hispanic gentleman. And the Black guy hit him. He said the guy cut me in line and it’s all over a Pokémon machine.”
The same motivation was also stated by the police department’s Captain Don Weilhamer. He is quoted as saying, “I think it’s totally ridiculous. I’m not a collector of them, but I understand some are very expensive, but like I said, we were told it was an argument. It wasn’t like someone was trying to steal one from another person.”
The Pokémon TCG vending machines are so often the source of fights because they’re incredibly infrequently restocked, and then those waiting in line for hours to buy products lose their minds when someone else appears to push in in front of them.
A man has been detained, although it’s not confirmed if he was the shooter, while the man who was shot was taken to hospital where he received surgery, and is now in a “serious but stable” condition.
Here’s WTHR‘s original report on the incident, in which a police officer provides the salient insight that rather than shooting someone over a piece of cardboard, you in fact shouldn’t do that.
It’ll good when The Pokémon Company finally meets its repeated promises to product more stock so this ridiculous situation can finally come to an end, although it’d sure help if people didn’t have guns.