More details about the fatal Call of Duty swatting incident that took place in Kansas at the tail end of 2017 are coming to light.
You’ll recall that in December, California resident Tyler Barriss allegedly called Wichita, Kansas, police to report a supposed murder/hostage/arson in progress, using what he presumably believed to be the address of a Call of Duty player intended as the focus of the ensuing police harassment. The address used, however, was apparently for a completely unrelated person, father of two Andrew Finch, who was subsequently shot and killed by police after opening his door. The officer who shot Finch was on paid administrative pending investigation as of two weeks ago, when Barriss was formally charged with involuntary manslaughter and extradited to Kansas.
If you were confused over how Barriss became involved, the newly released information has a bit more backstory, as investigators have released an affidavit identifying the the other people involved to some degree in the swatting incident. Kansas resident Shane Gaskill and Ohio resident Casey Viner were involved in a dispute over an online game, believed from early reports to be Call of Duty; following the death of Viner’s character at Gaskill’s character’s hand in a match with a monetary bet on the line, Viner threatened to swat Gaskill on Twitter, who then posted an address in Wichita that was not his and dared Viner to “try some shit.”
It is still not fully clear whether Viner directly asked Barriss to swat the address. “The affidavit says multiple people contacted investigators saying they were seeing a Twitter conversation between the Ohio man and a handle that was found to belong to 25-year-old Tyler Barriss,” KWCH reports. Barriss did tweet an admission of guilt that same evening, and Viner himself is apparently a suspect in multiple Cincinnati swatting incidents. Barriss’ voice is further said to be a match to both the Wichita call and a California bomb threat from several years ago, according to an unnamed FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force officer.
Prosecutors are reportedly still considering whether to charge Gaskill or Viner in conjunction with the swatting incident.
