Woman confesses to murdering sister for flirting with her boyfriend in Valorant

An image of murder suspect Fatiha Marzan — (Image credit: Orange County Sherriff's Office)

An Orlando woman has admitted to murdering her sister for flirting with her boyfriend in Valorant, the Orlando Sentinel reports. 21-year-old Fatiha Marzan was arrested by Orange County deputies on the evening of September 26, after calling police to report and confess to the crime about 15 hours after it happened.

Marzan is reported to have shared a room and bed with her 20-year-old sister Sayma, who was a Valorant player. Investigators say that Marzan regularly witnessed her long-distance boyfriend and her sister playing the game together, and perceived chat messages between the two as inappropriately flirtatious.

Although Marzan repeatedly confronted them both regarding their relationship, it seems that she never stopped regarding the pair's bond as a threat. After learning—or at least coming to believe—that her boyfriend had told her sister that he loved her, Marzan purchased a "dagger-style knife set" from Amazon and hid it for weeks, planning to attack her sister while the rest of the household slept, according to the arrest affidavit. She eventually murdered Sayma in the early hours of September 26.

The story is another episode of videogame-related violence in a series stretching back decades. Whether it's people dying in swatting 'pranks', death threats to developers, or murders over trivial hardware arguments, there have been a fair few of these kinds of stories in the last few years alone.

Marzan called police on the evening of her sister's murder, around 15 hours later, to report the death and confess to her crime. Sayma was declared dead by Orange County fire rescue about 20 minutes after they arrived, and Marzan was arrested. She is currently being held without bond and faces a first-degree murder charge.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.