A Los Angeles man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for phoning a false hostage threat to police in Wichita, resulting in the death of an innocent man, the Washington Post reports. Tyler Barriss, 26, pleaded guilty to 51 charges in Los Angeles, Kansas and Washington, D.C. Police responded to the home of Andrew Finch on Dec. 28, 2017, after a caller falsely claimed to be inside with hostages and a gun, a prank known as “swatting.” Finch, 28, answered the door and was fatally shot on his porch by officers who had surrounded his home. The call was found to have originated from Barriss. He told authorities he had made the call at the request of Casey Viner, 19, who had got into a feud with Shane Gaskill, 20, while the two were playing “Call of Duty” online.
Viner, of Ohio, asked Barriss to “swat” Gaskill, who lived in Wichita. When Gaskill learned he was being targeted, he dared Barriss to “swat” him and tricked the man into calling authorities to an old address where Gaskill no longer lived. Barriss told a Wichita 911 dispatcher he had accidentally shot his father in the head during an argument and was pointing a handgun at his mother and brother at the address that now belonged to Finch. Finch was shot dead when an officer thought he saw him reach for a weapon. Finch was not carrying a weapon and there were no hostages. Gaskill and Viner are awaiting trial. “Swatting” usually makes the news when police are tricked into raiding the home of a celebrity, such as Justin Bieber in 2012 or Lil Wayne in 2015. It has also become a way for people to escalate online disputes into the real world. punishing a rival with a surprise visit from a SWAT team.