Dispute over a $1.50 Call of Duty wager leads to death of 28 year old man in Kansas

Keshav Bhat

UPDATE: Los Angeles Police Department have arrested 25 year old Tyler Raj Barriss for making the ‘swatting’ call which resulted in the death of Andrew Finch.

Tyler Barriss was known online has SWAuTistic. He was in an interview with KEEMSTAR’s Drama Alert last night.

Police in Los Angeles says that Barriss was arrested previously in September 2015 for a making a bomb threat call to a ABC Studio in Glendale, CA.

It is not clear yet what he is being charged with at this time.


Original Story:

A dispute between two teammates, over the loss of a $1.50 Call of Duty wager, has led to the death of a 28 year old man in Wichita, Kansas. Police has ID’d the 28 year individual as Andrew Finch. He leaves behind two children. His mother spoke with local news outlet, in a video posted by the site here. She says she never heard of a swatting before. His mother also said Andrew Finch did not play video games.

Two individuals got into a heated argument over a UMG Wager online after a loss in the match. During the heated dispute, one of the individuals involved provided the other with a fake address for where he resided. The other individual decided to send the location to a known swatter. This known swatter is reportedly the same individual that called in a fake bomb threat at CWL Dallas event earlier in December. The swatter called in a fake scenario to the local police. Swatting has been a problem within the Call of Duty community. There have been numerous incidents where a fake situation is called into police, either via calling 911 or via other ways to report an emergency.

UMG, the site that hosted the wager which caused the dispute, says they will work to provide any information they can to local authorities.

Police arrived at the address and shot and killed the 28 year old male who was not involved in the dispute at all. The officer who fired the shot, a 7 year veteran of the local police department, has been placed on paid administrative leave as the department investigates what really happened during this incident.

“It was a shooting call involving hostages,” Police Chief Troy Livingston said. “The original call, we were told someone had an argument with their mother and dad was accidentally shot. And now that person was holding mother, brother and sister hostage. We learned through that call that a father was deceased, and had been shot in the head. That was the information we were working off of.”

Police said they are investigating if the incident was a prank “swatting” incident, but at the time they responded to the call, the officers were working off the information they had as they approached the house. It is not clear why the officer fired as soon as the individual opened the door.

”We were given some misinformation on the (original) call,” he said. “We got a call that someone was deceased in the residence and that proved not to be true. Also, we’re still trying to determine who was the hostages and how that unfolded as well.”

Reports claim the two Call of Duty players involved were Miruhcle and Baperizer; these two players have since deleted their Twitter accounts. The known swatter also changed his Twitter profile to a new username.

Pro player Parasite shared some additional information that was found on Twitter about the incident:

 

Another Pro Player, FaZe Clan’s ZooMaa, has shared information showing the swatter, who has now changed his Twitter username, threatening him in the past and has even threatened to call in fake bomb threats to CWL New Orleans, the next CWL event, taking place January 12-14. ZooMaa said he has already contacted the police about the individual for his own safety.

 

We will update this post as we get more information on what happened.

If you have any information on the people involved, contact the local police department.

SOURCE: Kansas News (1, 2) (additional info via Dexerto)

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