ELYRIA — Daniel Petric should be found not guilty by reason of insanity for the Oct. 20, 2007, shooting that left his mother dead and his father wounded, his attorney said Wednesday during closing arguments in the 17-year-old’s aggravated murder trial.

Defense attorney James Kersey said his client, who is being tried as an adult, had become obsessed with video games, particularly the sci-fi shooting game “Halo 3,” a game that his parents refused to let him play and confiscated when they caught him sneaking it into their Brighton Township home about a month before the shooting.

Kersey didn’t deny Daniel shot his parents, but said it wasn’t a planned execution.

“His indication was that he popped,” Kersey said Daniel told county sheriff’s deputies who interrogated the boy.

But Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Tony Cillo insisted that Daniel, who was 16 at the time of the shootings, had planned the killings, even telling a defense psychologist who later ruled Daniel sane that he had thought about killing his parents a week beforehand.

Cillo said Daniel was tired of his parents’ rules and decided to eliminate them.

“He was 16 years old and thought he should be able to make his own rules,” Cillo said.

Kersey also asked county Common Pleas Judge James Burge, who heard the case instead of a jury and will hand down a verdict in January, to consider finding Daniel guilty of murder, which carries a potential sentence of 18 years to life. If Daniel is convicted of aggravated murder, he could be sent to prison for life without parole.

Premeditation is a requirement for conviction on the aggravated murder charge.

Just because the plan didn’t end with police believing the shootings were the murder-suicide Daniel hoped to stage doesn’t mean the shootings weren’t planned, Cillo said.

“This was a person fully in charge of his faculties,” he said. “A bad plan does not make it a spur-of-the-moment plan.”

During the trial, Kersey and Daniel’s family, who say they have forgiven the boy, have portrayed him as a normal teenager who became addicted to “Halo 3” and video games in general.

“It was his sole interest, his sole focus, his sole occupation while he was recovering from a staph infection,” Kersey said.

Daniel may not have liked his parents’ rules on video games, but that doesn’t mean he was planning to kill his parents, he said.

“There was no rancor, there was no fighting,” Kersey said.

Cillo said Daniel set his plan in motion earlier in the day by calling a friend and telling him that his parents were fighting.

The Rev. Mark Petric, Daniel’s father, testified during the trial that the day of the shooting had been a good day with him and his son doing yard work. He said he and his wife, Sue Petric, were sitting in the family’s great room when Daniel came in and told them to close their eyes because he had a surprise for them.

Cillo said Wednesday that Daniel then opened fire, shooting his father once in the head and then his mother three times, including a fatal shot to her head. Daniel then began preparing the scene as if his father had shot his mother before taking his own life, even asking the wounded Mark Petric to take the gun from him.

Cillo said Daniel told the defense psychologist that things didn’t go according to plan.

“ ‘First, my dad didn’t die,’ ” Cillo said, reading from what Daniel told the psychologist. “’I knew my sister and brother-in-law were coming over at 9 p.m., but they came over early and from there it blew up in my face.’”

Heidi Archer and her husband, Andy Archer, arrived at the home as Daniel was staging the scene, Cillo said.

During the trial, the Archers testified that Daniel told them to come back later, but Andy Archer forced his way inside and began helping Mark Petric. He also disarmed Daniel, who fled a few moments later in the family’s minivan.

Kersey said that what Daniel took when he left the house was telling.

“He takes the video game and takes off,” he said.

Wellington police stopped Daniel a short time later and discovered the “Halo 3” game in the minivan he was driving.

Daniel told the officers who arrested him that his father had shot his mother.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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