A 48-year-old father from the United Kingdom was killed by his son after a "game of slaps" went horribly wrong. Authorities with the Crown Prosecution Service said that Malcolm Callender was horsing around with his 19-year-old son Ewan outside of a pub in Reading.
Witnesses said that Callender hit his son with a "stinging slap" and then gave him a free shot to get him back. Ewan walloped his dad so hard that he fell back and smacked his head on the pavement. Bystanders rushed to help Callender, and he was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Ewan was taken into custody at the scene as investigators looked into the case. Ewan told authorities that it was normal for him and his father to horse around.
"Dad slapped me around the face on the way out just because we were messing around. It is just normal. There was nothing aggressive about it," he said during an inquest.
After 18 months, authorities decided not to charge Ewan with a crime because he was engaged in "legal horseplay" with his father.
"You are allowed to consent to the application of force in sport, after all, if it were not so, then every contact sport and every martial art would be against the law," Ian Wade, assistant coroner for Berkshire, said. "You are also allowed to consent to the application of force in what is a rather Victorian way called horseplay. It seems to me that what took place here fulfills the definition of horseplay."
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