Canoga Park Teen Injured While Playing Pokémon Go

By Michale Hemmingway, Quilt staff

DATELINE: STRATHERN STREET

A local teenager was injured today while playing Pokémon Go, the popular smart cellular telephone, or smart phone application, or app, that has taken the nation — and Canoga Park — by storm.

Radek Murta, 19, of Blythe Street, was on the curb along Strathern Street at Alabama Avenue, in Canoga Park's tight-knit Strathabama neighborhood, searching for the virtual reality characters when he spotted “Rattata” on his screen, and approached the creature to "capture" it.

Radek Murta mere seconds before being injured while playing Pokémon Go along Strathern Street.
Curiously, he had the foresight to, for whatever reason, take a picture of himself playing the popular
game, evidently using a completely different device to take said picture. Photo credit: Radek Murta.

“So, f_ckeen...like I’m gettin’ close to it but I don’t know how to, f_ckeen, do it right, so I can’t catch it...? So I squat down an reach out an’ that’s when the motherf_cker bit me. They don’t tell you they bite, you know? F_ckeen drew blood an‘ everything. I’m-a sue those motherf_ckers at EA Games, yo!"

Pokémon Go was developed by Niantic. 

Radek Murta. Staff photo.

Murta, an unemployed 19-year-old entrepreneur admits that the popular game isn’t really his forté which currently runs more towards providing complimentary, unsolicited “security checkups” for those who park cars around Lanark Recreation Center, but is playing to collect characters for his brother, Jarik.

“Fuckeen...he in the hospital, like, recuperating an' shit...?” Murta says, while using a length of toilet paper to re-bandage his bloody, pus-oozing finger. “So I’m collecting the little animals an’ shit for him 'til he gets better.”

Jarik Murta, 11, an avid Pokémon Go player, was struck down by a bus on Topanga Canyon Boulevard recently after wandering into the street trying to catch "Jigglypuff."