A man has been shot dead at a cinema in Latvia after a fellow movie-goer objected to the volume at which he was eating his popcorn. The assailant, 27, reportedly had a brief argument with the man, aged 43, who was sitting next to him during a screening of Black Swan in the Forum cinema, one of the largest in the city of Riga.
When the credits rolled, the younger man pulled out a legally registered firearm and shot the other man dead. Other audience members then phoned for the police and an ambulance. The younger man – a graduate of the police academy who holds a doctorate in law from the University of Latvia – waited to be arrested.
The most recent incident of cinema rage in the UK was in 2009, when a teenager threw bleach over a woman who tried to quieten a group of youths during a screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Leeds.
Catherine Shoard
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 13.17 GMT