Video game swatting


Most stories about swatting end in both police officers and victims being inconvenienced, nothing more. However, every few months you'll hear about how someone was killed due to a swatting call.


Such was the case last night in Wichita, Kansas. After two Call of Duty players got into a heated argument online using their neon green Turtle Beach microphones, one asked for the other's address and threatened to kill him. Unwilling to take a break from playing video games, he called the police with a phony story hoping that they would do the work for him.


The police department of Wichita has stated that it received a 911 call reporting that a teenager was holding his mother, brother, and sister hostage at gunpoint after killing his father. A team of fully equipped SWAT members, like those you see in Counter-Strike, were sent in to defuse the situation.


This is probably what the SWAT team looked like.


When the SWAT team arrived at the front door they were anticipating a possible firefight, something that doesn't exactly happen often in Kansas where there's little to do except run through wheat fields and talk about UFO sightings. Naturally, they were on edge. Little did they know that inside the house a family of four were enjoying a Thursday night like any other.


But when 28 year old Andrew Finch walked to the door after hearing noises outside, one of the SWAT members discharged his weapon through the door, catching Finch several times. He would die from the bullet wounds minutes later once the SWAT team cleared the area and realized that the call-in was phony.




Learn More: Read About Swatting On Know Your Meme




As they would come to find out, the address given to authorities wasn't the actual address of the Call of Duty player who was arguing just an hour before. Instead, it was a nearby address of the completely unrelated Finch family, a group of people who haven't bought Call of Duty since it was actually good.



The identity of the kid who called in the SWAT is yet to be revealed,  but he did take to Twitter to post about what happened, stating:


I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION



Dexerto reports that the argument began with a $2 bet in Call of Duty. The loser of the bet wasn't happy, and blew a gasket in his brain when insults came flying his way.


The SWAT member who shot and killed Andrew Finch has been placed on administrative paid leave. He is a seven year veteran of Wichita's police department.