About a month ago, my 10-year-old son accidentally committed suicide when he followed instructions he saw online on a game called Roblox. There was a detailed list of instructions that claimed to make "DIY crystals" but turned out to be chlorine gas. Is there any way I can get the police to charge this murderer with ruining my life and killing my son? My friends suggested I ask around before I pay for a lawyer.
There's no need to get worked up over your son dying in the year 2026, just use technology to look up "closest indian burial grounds near me."
First off, I am so sorry about your loss. This sounds taxing on your family, and the user above is highly insensitive for posting something so informal.
I think you should show police what exactly your son saw, so you can prove that whoever posted that did so maliciously. Explain how your son followed the instructions and ended up killing himself. Did this person communicate privately with your son, or was it public? If it is public you should report this.
Depending on the scenario you might not even need to buy a lawyer because it sounds like your son was tricked into killing himself. That is a federal crime if you're in the United States.
There are several lawsuits against Roblox right now because of wrongful death, but I am concerned about a big detail you overlooked. You could be prosecuted for negligence yourself because you allowed your son to make the poison in your home unsupervised, depending on the scenario. After reading about Roblox for this thread, I feel like you could be partially responsible.
OP is referring to a 4chan copypasta, this would be impossible to prosecute because there is no known original poster since 4chan is anonymous. It would take lawyers years of fighting Roblox to see who posted the content only to trace it back to 4chan. It's pointless.
OP here, I logged into Roblox and navigated the very confusing UI, I found a history so I clicked the last game he played and it said something about the game being deleted for "violating TOS" and I can only assume it was the crystal game. He told me he found an expirement he wanted to try so I let him do it, in retrospect I should have asked for an ingredient list because if I had known it was going to make chlorine gas I would have stopped him and warned him before this happened.
This case is legally hopeless, to prove he died because of roblox you would need to directly connect how the platform resulted in his death (wrongful death lawsuit) and then connect it to how the platform either caused or allowed it to happen. The user could be held responsible if you get police to subpeona Roblox but that would be expensive to do and they might question you on negligence for allowing him to do the expirement without you first checking it.
This sounds terrible, and I foster great empathy for what you have gone through. I would advise therapy, as it would be a good option considering the magnitude of the situation.
I think you should contact the police for that, not an attorney, there might be a criminal charge you can pursue. Simply tell police that you suspect someone instructed your son on how to kill himself and they will go from there.
Definitely report to the police, they can help pursue criminal charges on the guy who instructed your son to accidentally commit suicide. Send them a link to the Roblox game (called "experience") and a screenshot of the thumbnail and category. Demonstrate it is (presumably) rated safe for kids but contains explicit instructions to make chlorine gas.