"Swatting" Prank Leads to a Deadly Police Shooting

I hate to admit it but I used to make prank phone calls as a young punk.

I'd dial random numbers and harrass whoever happened to answer the phone. My friends would listen on the other lines and laugh, I'd also call and order pizzas to other friends houses and stuff. I was a stupid kid and this was shortly after the Jerky Boys tapes came out so I thought I was cool.

I never got anyone killed tho thank god.

"Swatting" has been making headlines lately.

Think of them like prank phone calls but these usually involve claiming things like bombs on planes or people with guns and the like. These are very serious in the times we live in nowadays where police appear to be quick to shoot. These aren't childish pranks like I used to make, these can have dire circumstances!

The leader of the Lizard Squad, who gained notoriety for shutting down PlayStations and Xboxs Lives online services with DDoS attacks recently got sentanced to 2 years in prison for his involvement in swatting incidents and ofcourse the denial of services attacks on the online gaming platforms.

Lizard Sqaud's Infamous Logo

I also just read about a new swatting incident that left a man dead.

A Wichita Kansas police officer fatally shot and killed a 28 year old man late Thursday night while responding to what the authorities now believe may have been a swatting prank gone horribly wrong..

According to the report, a man named Andrew Finch answered the door of his residence when local police were getting into position. They called upon the home’s occupants to come out and when he hesitated they shot him.

Deputy Wichita Police Chief Troy Livingston explained that officers were responding to “a call about a homicide and hostage situation that turned out to be false.”

Unfortunately the information they were working off of may have been based on a prank gone wrong.

Per a local news outlet, gamers playing Call of Duty that night were reportedly responsible for the events leading up to Finch’s death. Or atleast that’s the way it seemed according to reactions to the news on Twitter.

According to these posts two gamers were arguing when one threatened to target the other with a swatting call. The person who was the target of the alleged swatting gave the other gamer a false address which sent the police to a nearby home instead of his own.

The person who was supposed to be the target of the swatting sent a Tweet saying, “someone tried to swat me and got an innocent man killed.”

Wichita Police would neither confirm nor deny the swatting prank story, however they shot and killed an innocent man because he was behaving strangely when he answered his door and police thought he was an armed hostage taker. They're tight-lipped now until they finish their investigation.

It's hard to fathom that an innocent man is dead because a couple of teens were arguing over a game on Twitter. I don't suspect this will be the last swatting incident we hear about in the news as it's easier to call and hide your identity with the various methods we have to communicate.

Thanks for reading,

@goldenarms