Yesterday, we reported that a father was murdered by police after a false hostage situation call was sent to police. The call was made by an online “swatter”, a term used to describe someone who makes false police calls in an attempt to get SWAT teams to raid peoples homes and scare them… sometimes people die though.The incident happened over a Call of Duty wager of $1.50 (yes, a dollar and 50 cents, that’s not a typo), an argument ensued and one of the players said they were going to swat the other player.
The player who was being threatened then handed over an address to someone who has swatted other people in the Call of Duty community and a call was made. The player who was threatened did not live there and an innocent family had their home stormed by police and it ended in a fatality.
On Friday night, YouTuber Daniel Keem, AKA Killer Keemstar, reached out to the Call of Duty swatter in an attempt to interview him on his online news show, DramaAlert, and succeeded. The swatter known as Swautistic stated in the interview that he doesn’t believe that he had any hand in murdering the man, he just made the call, he didn’t pull the trigger. He also attempted to deflect some of the blame toward the person who provided the address to make himself seem more innocent.
He himself even stated that “I love swatting kids who think that nothing is going to happen.” A 911 call was released by police and the voice of the caller matches the one of Swautistic in the interview so there’s no doubt that he is indeed the one who called the cops.
Swautistic, now identified as Tyler Barriss, has since been arrested by police. Footage from a police bodycam of the swatting incident has been released showing the death of the father also revealing he kept reaching into his waistband as cops asked him to show his hands. As Barriss reported in the call, he made it seem like the man had a gun and was ready to use it so cops were expecting to potentially have to open fire. None of this would have happened if Barriss had never made the call. You can listen to the 911 call below but be advised, it is disturbing.
Barris said he doesn’t believe he should be charged with any form of murder but he does think he may be due for some jail time, just not life in prison.
Barriss also suggested that he has been behind other swattings and bomb threats that have lead to evacuations at major events such as MLG tournaments and the FCC Net Neutrality vote.
“Sometimes people will send me money on Paypal to SWAT someone, though typically since I kind of just work alone and do my own thing,” he said. “I just look for things to evacuate. It didn’t take a team of people to evacuate MLG Dallas. I just did that by myself. Same thing with the FCC. I just evacuated stuff for fun to get it on TV.”
We’ll continue to update you if this story develops.
