Call of Duty gaming community points to swatting in deadly Wichita police shooting

[moriah]

Source: Wichita Eagle

Online gamers have said in multiple Twitter posts that the shooting of a man Thursday night by Wichita police was the result of a “swatting” prank involving two gamers.

*snip*

Livingston said the department received a call that someone had an argument with their mother, that the father had been shot in the head and the shooter was holding his mother, brother and sister hostage.

*snip*

Officers went to the 1000 block of McCormick, preparing for a hostage situation and they “got into position,” he said.

“A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”

Read more: http://amp.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html

---

There is additional discussion of the phenomenon of "SWATting" and the now suspended Twitter accounts claiming/disclaiming responsibility.

This isn't the first Swatting that ended in a shooting, but the most notable case was not Internet-related and it was an officer shot by the homeowner (officer was wearing a vest). This may be the first "SWATting" that ended in a civilian death, though.

[HopeAgain]

1. Wow

No independent confirmation of the situation before they start shooting?

[SoCalMusicLover]

16. Standard Pig Procedure

SHOOT First, worry about the facts later.

[shenmue]

2. Assholes better knock it off. They did it because they thought it was funny. Now somebody died.

Not funny anymore!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. They are criminally responsible. They know that armed force will be deployed.

At the very least they are responsible for involuntary manslaughter and MUST be charged, tried, convicted, and jailed.

Their sense of humor can sustain them in prison.

[UpInArms]

3. Another link

Really stupid crazy peeps out there

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/kan-man-killed-cops-victim-swatting-prank-article-1.3726171

[LonePirate]

4. The swatter and the police officer both deserve jail time for homicide.

We need to condemn and punish both the swatter who caused the incident and the cowardly, trigger-happy police officer who gunned down the victim. The BLM movement has been leading the way in confronting the epidemic of police violence in this country. We need to stand with them.

[SoCalMusicLover]

17. The Little Piggie Won't Be Charged

Not a chance. The excuse is already in place.

[Hong Kong Cavalier]

5. SWATting is nothing less than attempted murder.

Using the Police as the weapon. When news agencies call it a "prank" it diminishes the sheer danger involved in such an action.

[Bengus81]

6. Yep,totally UNARMED when he opened the door to see what the hell was going on....

You have lots of Police cars,lights flashing galore and no problem inside your home. You open the door to see what's going on and get shot dead. I don't care if the WPD want to lean on this SWATting for some kind of lame ass excuse but you don't BLOW someone away just because they open the front door of their home.

Trigger happy seven year veteran of the WPD and now a dead father with two children.

After she heard the shot, Finch said she walked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. A door leading from the kitchen to the side yard was open, she said. “The police said, ‘Come out with your hands up,’” she said. “(The officer) took me, my roommate and my granddaughter, who witnessed the shooting and had to step over her dying uncle’s body.”

The family was handcuffed, taken outside and placed into separate police cruisers, she said. They were taken downtown and interviewed by Wichita police officers.Asked if the family has talked to investigators from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, Finch said they were told KBI investigators would contact them.

But they have questions now.

“What gives the cops the right to open fire?” Finch asked. “Why didn’t they give him the same warning they gave us? That cop murdered my son over a false report.” Finch and Hernandez-Caballero said they want to see the officer – identified only as a seven-year veteran of the department – and the person who made the false report held accountable.

“The person who made the phone call took my nephew, her son, two kids’ father,” Hernandez-Caballero said. “How does it feel to be a murderer? I can’t believe people do this on purpose.” Online gamers have said in multiple Twitter posts that the shooting was the result of a “swatting” prank involving two gamers.

Andrew Finch was not involved in the online game, according to his mother and people in the gaming community. “He doesn’t play video games,” Finch said. “He has better things to do with his time.”

Swatting is an internet hoax where someone makes a call to a police department with a false story of an ongoing crime – often with killing or hostages involved – in an attempt to draw a large number of police officers to a particular address.

[rogue emissary]

7. As sick as the callers are. What does this say about our police departments?

Clearly, they don't have enough training in firearm safety and De-escalation as the've become municipal assassins.

[IronLionZion]

8. The targeted gamer apparently provided a false address, resulting in cops showing up to Finch's home

According to the screenshotted Twitter posts from Thursday, one Call of Duty player threatened to "swat" another player after they got into a heated argument over a $1 or $2 bet. The targeted gamer apparently provided a false address, resulting in cops showing up to Finch's home instead of his own.

"Someone tried to swat me and got an innocent man killed," the targeted gamer tweeted as news of the fatal police shooting began to spread.

The gamer who supposedly committed the prank later tweeted: "I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION."

Can you imagine going about your day like any normal person and having the SWAT team show up and kill you because of some completely unrelated assholes being stupid?

Some people

The asshole who called the cops without a legitimate emergency did commit a crime and must be prosecuted. WTF is wrong with the cop? Scared shitless of what exactly? The family said their son was unarmed.

[sandensea]

9. We're being pushed back to the Wild West era

With despotic mining tycoons, wanton shootouts, and, of course, prostitutes:

[IronLionZion]

11. What an indecent bunch of sinful greedy prostitutes

those filthy prostitutes in your picture have no shame whatsoever.

[Dave Starsky]

13. We are worse than the "Wild West".

There were actually a host of local gun laws in place during those days. The Gunfight at the OK Corral was started as the result of a gun ordinance violation.

[sandensea]

26. Good point.

Judge Roy Bean was legality and integrity in the flesh compared to most of today's Republican kangaroo judges.

[IronLionZion]

10. "Family says son killed by police in swatting was unarmed, didnt play video games"

More info:

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192147194.html

The family is furious with police. Maybe our president should call them and tell them that blue lives matter and both sides are guilty but some cops are probably good people.

[Hav]

12. This is effed up on multiple levels

First we have a police officer unloading his gun on someone coming out the door and I'm sure the police officer couldn't even make sure it was the alleged hostage taker. Could have been anybody, even a kid just coming out.
On the other side, you have to be a special kind of ahole to make an emergency call claiming a violent crime is in progress just for a joke, hoax or out of revenge. At best, it's wasting the time of the police and is a hassle to the victim, at worst, you send a swat team on edge who believe they are about to meet a killer who is likely going to kill more. It was only a matter of time before innocent people would get killed.
What's going on in their minds? Well, this is the person that allegedly made the hoax call justifying his actions and pushing away all responsibility:
“I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION,”

No, your actions did get a person killed. I hope with the information given by the other gamer, that the police can find this idiot. I don't know whether this can end in a jail sentence but I surely think it should.

[joshcryer]

18. This cybercrime guy has more details about the swatter:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/

[moriah]

20. Agreed entirely on 19 shades of effed up.

Trigger-happy officer startled by the guy, curious why there were flashing lights in his windows, opening his door before they'd shouted over a bullhorn or something for people to come out. (It's sadly not the times where landlines are in most homes for officers to try to communicate inside.)

Idiotic gamer upset because he can't shoot a person in-game sending armed people to someone's house to terrorize them, and believing they would actually give a real address -- or not caring.

Other gamer not making sure the address he gave was non-existent first -- though I can't entirely blame him, I imagine he feels shitty for choosing a fake address that was actually someone's home. Of course, he probably was thinking the other person would know no one would give their real physical address online.

And a random father of two dead for nothing other than opening his front door to the best of current knowledge.

[rocktivity]

25. You didn't get anyone killed because you didn't discharge the weapon?

Last edited Sat Jan 20, 2018, 02:37 PM - Edit history (4)

Well, "but for your actions," as Judge Judy would say, the police wouldn't have been there.

What you DID do was file a false police report, which is a felony. And if anyone dies as a result of your committing a felony, you've also committed a murder. The "lookout" or "wheel man" in a bank robbery gang isn't charged or punished less severely because they never went inside.


rocktivity

[joshcryer]

15. This is fucked up, the COD players gave a random fake address.

So anyone anywhere can one day be executed at random now in this country.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Police investigate if video game prank led to shooting death

Heather Hollingsworth and Jim Salter, Associated Press
Updated 4:00 pm, Friday, December 29, 2017

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police and the FBI are investigating whether an argument over an online game prompted a prank call that led to a house where an officer shot and killed a Kansas man who apparently wasn't involved in the dispute.

. . .

Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston said an officer responded to a report that a father had been shot in the head and that a shooter was holding his mother, brother and sister hostage, The Wichita Eagle reported.

When police arrived at the house, a 28-year-old man who came to the front door was shot and died, Livingston said. The man hasn't been identified by police, but Lisa Finch told the newspaper that the victim was her son, Andrew Finch. She said he was unarmed and was not a gamer.

. . .

Rep. Katherine Clark, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced an anti-swatting bill in 2015 — then was herself the victim of swatting. Armed officers in 2016 responded to an anonymous call claiming an active shooter was at Clark's home.

More:
http://www.chron.com/business/technology/article/Officer-shoots-kills-man-while-investigating-12461509.php

[cagefreesoylentgreen]

21. The swatters have a history of doing this

Being a gamer myself, I’ve been followed this thread on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CoDCompetitive/comments/7msvoy/rip_to_the_dude_that_got_killed_over_a_2_wager/

@ZooMaa

2017-12-29 06:32 UTC

The same kid who swatted Dallas, threatened to swat NOLA, threatened to swat my girlfriend and I all day, swatted an innocent family today and someone was killed. Here are screenshots of the kid tweeting me. He changed his @ and I found it. I’m tired of this shit, he needs...

[Oneironaut]

22. Can they send both these freaking morons to prison?

I don't know enough to say anything about the shooter, but if the victim was unarmed, that's very bad.

I'm not surprised this came from the Call of Duty community.

[GeorgeGist]

23. Should be pointing to professional executioner.

[rocktivity]

24. Swatting: So it's not just for celebrities anymore

Those who try to cause the swatting incident will use caller ID spoofing or other techniques to disguise their number as being local. Or they call local non-emergency numbers instead of 911...

Immortal.org (3/2015): Reports of alleged gunshots fired at Lil Wayne’s Miami mansion...appear to have been a hoax known as “swatting,” according to...(p)olice...(R)esponding officers...included a heavily armed SWAT team...

Swatting entails dispatching emergency authorities in response to a fake incident...(T)he calle(r) dialed a non-emergency line and claimed to have shot four people at the rapper’s beachfront property in southern Florida...Wayne was in the recording studio at the time of the incident...(N)umerous celebrities have been the victims of the practice...includ(ing) Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Tom Cruise...

Felony murder much?


rocktivity

[moriah]

27. Small update out of LA: suspect arrested as potentially @Swautistic/@GoredTutor36

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/Police-Say-Hoax-911-Call-Led-to-Fatal-Shooting-of-Unarmed-Kansas-Man-467242793.html

Tyler Barriss, 25, was arrested as a suspect in the case by the Los Angeles Police Department, sources told NBC's Andrew Blankstein. He was taken into custody on a fugitive warrant in Los Angeles Saturday afternoon, Blankstein reported.

This individual may or may not be the Swatter, but people had linked the potential identities back after the user claimed responsibility for the Dallas bomb threat -- saying that Barriss (who was arrested in a 2015 bomb threat) was @Swautistic. The user started using a picture remarkably similar to Barriss's mugshot as his Twitter picture before the Swatting, and an alleged post from his "girlfriend" claimed his real name was Tyler. But those posts all came after an account started saying the two were one in the same.

Truthfully, though, the picture on Twitter looks like a younger Barriss, not an older one, though I can't find it anywhere else on the Internet and neither can Tineye. Or his mugshot from 2015 was rough. If @Swautistic wanted to create a patsy because of someone falsely linking the two identities, he couldn't have done a better job. Especially if the Barriss in CA wasn't in compliance with 2015 probation conditions, etc.

The timing of the arrest doesn't rule out that the person the Twitter user Keemstar interviewed for "DramaAlert", though, as he claimed before 1 PM Pacific to have had the interview with him. The timing of that interview being before the 911 tape was released suggests that there's no way the person Keemstar spoke to (who said he was over 18) could have attempted to make his own voice sound like the 911 caller -- and there are similarities in voices.

But either way, the prior felon bomb threatener whose photo the Twitter account was using has been taken into custody for questioning.

Edit: I think the article citing "Saturday afternoon" is a misprint. BNO was the first to report that NBC had said he was arrested, citing Friday afternoon.

http://bnonews.com/news/index.php/news/id6899

Second edit, another link from Wichita local media saying Barriss was arrested.

http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Two-critically-injured-in-W-Wichita-shooting-467049153.html

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

28. ....

[Mr. Ected]

29. Too much attention on the swatting aspect

Yet another instance of the "murder first, act questions later" mentality of the police.

The swatter is an accessory to the crime...but the killing officer needs to spend the rest of his life behind bars.