Senior Assassin is a game that a lot of high school kids across the country play--and others play it outside of high school--where they shoot each other with water guns. You basically get a name that is your target. Then you hunt them down, shoot them with water, and the last one standing wins.
It's like The Highlander with squirt pistols, no lightning, and...well, it's nothing like Highlander, but it's just a silly game.
Unfortunately, this game has some real-world consequences. Kids have been shot while playing it, all because they're acting like they're up to something while holding a gun-shaped object. Lurking around neighborhoods in the middle of the night like that is just asking for someone to freak out.
Even more unfortunately, waiting outside of Planet Fitness like that doesn't work out a whole lot better.
What was supposed to a fun game for high school seniors left one Indiana student facing a felony charge.
Adrian Williams, 18, and his friends from school decided to play a game called “Senior Assassin,” where students go around their neighborhood and shoot their classmates with water guns until one person wins.
But Williams’ water gun was mistaken for the real deal, leading to his arrest on a charge of felony intimidation. The 18-year-old fears his college scholarship could now be in jeopardy.
On Friday afternoon, Williams was waiting outside a Planet Fitness in Portage. He had a water gun, bought from TikTok, ready to spray one of his classmates.
Several people called 911, thinking it was a real gun, and more than a dozen Portage police officers responded.
Williams said that he found himself staring down the barrel of four or five actual firearms, was scared to death, and yelled that it was just a water gun.
However, I have to feel like there's something missing here.
Yeah, kids playing this game skulk about and look like they're up to something, because this doesn't seem to fit the charge of felony intimidation as I read the law. The intimidation statute requires someone to communicate a threat, not just stand there with what looks like a gun in his hand, and it's only a misdemeanor unless the act is specifically about a forcible felony or targets someone who is a witness in a trial, targeted because of their job, is trying to threaten terrorism, or something insane like that.
At worst, this looks like misdemeanor brandishing, as it wasn't a loaded gun, and even then, Indiana law typically requires someone to point the gun at another.
Based on what's in this report, that doesn't seem to be the case.
Now, was it stupid to stand outside of a gym with an exposed "gun" and wait for your target? Yeah, it was. Especially since, from a picture in the original post, it sure looked like a handgun with big magazine capacity, but it's also stupid because it makes it easier for your would-be target to tell you're out there and slip out the side door or something. At least conceal the water gun and make sure it doesn't look too realistic, just to be safe.
But on the same token, this also seems like a massive overreaction.
I get that officers thought they had an active shooter on their hands, and showing up with weapons drawn isn't my issue so much as the charges themselves.
Look, the game is silly. If done well, it's good, clean fun. I've mentioned before that my son played this with his frat brothers in college. They just kept it on campus, and since everyone, including campus police, knew what was up, there were never any real issues. Their guns also looked like water guns. It was fun for them, and while I'm disappointed at how quickly my son was eliminated, he still had a blast.
But this incident feels like something got left out in the report, and whatever it was is some key detail that will change anything. Considering how the media likes to make cops look bad, I can't rule that out in the least, especially since Williams said he's worried about his scholarship, which means he's got an interest in lying, too.
Or, the local authorities are jackwagons who, while knowing about the game, still want to screw over people. That's a possibility, too.
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