01x01 - Death by SWAT

[bunniefuu]

[switch clicks]

[interviewer] Okay, we're recording.

[Tyler Barriss] All right.

[interviewer]

So, maybe the best place to start is,

how did you get involved in this?

["Flagging" by Bettina Köster playing]

[sirens blaring]

[helicopter blades whirring]

[Barriss]

I was in an argument with someone that

most people would consider a hacker.

I was reading the texts on my phone,

and I guess I said something

that kind of, I have to assume,

like, insulted his pride

or his ego or something.

And this person sent the SWAT team

to my house at midnight.

["Flagging" continues playing]

[helicopter blades whirring]

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[Barriss] When I looked out my window,

I noticed it was really bright outside,

like, really bright.

So then I walked out my room

and opened the front door.

And it I looked up in the sky

and there was a helicopter.

The light was so bright that it was

It seemed like it was mid-afternoon,

that's how bright the light was.

[sirens blaring]

[Barriss] Then shortly after,

cop cars started pulling up,

and they were getting out

with shotguns and r*fles.

Maybe by land, maybe by sea ♪

[Barriss] It was an eye-opening experience

that that he could do that

to my house over nothing,

, 'cause it was a hoax call.

Whatever he said, wasn't true.

He said that someone

was being held hostage in the closet.

I learned later

that he even pretended to be

the girl that was allegedly

being held hostage in my closet.

I wasn't scared for my life.

I didn't feel like

I was gonna die or anything.

I just thought it was cool

that he could do that.

[interviewer] You thought it was cool.

[Barriss] That's what I thought

about that experience.

Quite frankly,

I was thinking, "Holy sh*t."

"This guy actually just sent

the SWAT team to my house,

and he's not worried at all

about the consequences."

maybe by sea ♪

[woman in phone recording]

This call is from a federal prison.

[theme music playing]

[ominous music playing]

[reporter 1]

Now, if you've never heard of swatting

Honestly, I hadn't

until this story happened.

[caller] I've got two people here

held hostage, all right?

[reporter 1] It's when someone

makes a prank call about a bogus crime

to get the SWAT team

to go to someone's house.

[reporter 2]

An army of Nassau County SWAT teams

descended on a home, g*ns drawn.

They thought they were

responding to a double-m*rder,

and a suspect who had

barricaded himself in the home.

[SWAT officer]

Police department search warrant!

- [g*nsh*t]

- [indistinct yelling]

[reporter 2]

But it all turned out to be a hoax.

Down! Get on the ground!

[reporter 3] The swatting targets

are sometimes celebrities

like Rihanna and Justin Bieber,

but are often online gamers.

People making the false 911 calls

and then watch live online.

[tense music playing]

Swatting started as a way to, I think,

disrupt gaming competitions.

Or if they lose an important match,

to get back at somebody else.

It goes back more than 20 years.

People playing a video game,

they call the police

and mimic the person that they lost to,

and say that they've k*lled family members

and they see how many people

they can get to come down.

I come out of my room,

they got g*ns pointed at me.

[chuckling]

I'm like, "Oh my God, I'm gonna die."

[Krebs]

A lot of the people involved in swatting

are doing this to somebody gaming online

and a whole bunch of people

all over the world are watching it live.

You could tell them.

You could tell them, actually.

It's not funny and it's like

The takeaways is one thing,

but this is, like,

police who are saving lives.

- Um

- A waste of police time, whoever did it.

Being able to send the police

to kick in someone's door

while this is all on camera,

kind of ups the ante.

People who perpetrate this

are looking for b*mb dogs, helicopters.

That's all part of the "fun."

Each swatting incident costs

law enforcement on average $10,000.

[Krebs] It's about being feared.

It's about being known.

Making the world

acknowledge your presence.

[yelling]

For a lot of these individuals,

any attention is good attention.

Somebody cares enough about me

to send the SWAT team to my house?

I must be important.

[reporter 4] But the FBI's

biggest concern, that one day,

these criminal crank calls

will turn deadly.

[birds chirping]

[children laughing]

["Jane Doe"] Shh, shh.

And then we'll change

her face, hair, and clothing.

Let's go with Gigi, 'cause that's easy.

We'll do a random last name.

I play video games 'cause it's fun for me.

You can be really creative

with it sometimes.

Oh my gosh. She looks crazy.

[chuckling] Look at her legs.

What kind of power workouts are you doing?

I deal with anxiety and stuff like that.

When you have anxiety,

you tend to like revert in yourself

and do things that feel better for you.

And this feels better for me sometimes.

[intriguing music playing]

Ooh, where should we go?

Prettier houses in Oasis Springs.

It starts off as, you know,

you not wanting to deal with real life.

You get validation from the game,

and, at some point it becomes addictive.

You wanna get that validation

over and over again.

Look, my neighbors are coming to visit me,

which is not something

that happens in real life.

If real life isn't making me

feel good and this is,

I'm gonna play this and spend

a majority of my time doing this.

Okay, this is Tyler,

and it's Christmas Day.

["Jane Doe"] Really, the reason

I started gaming was my friend, Tyler.

And I just got something on camera

that was kind of entertaining.

["Jane Doe"]

We met when I was in the seventh grade,

he taught me how to play games.

He was the first boyfriend I ever had.

[intriguing music continues]

["Jane Doe"]

He delved into the gaming community,

and didn't really

get outside of the house.

His father died when he was younger.

His mother, she moved to Vegas

and they lost contact.

His grandmother, I know her as his mom,

that's what he called her.

But he wasn't the same online

as he was in person.

[distressing music playing]

[Koerner] Playing Halo, the Xbox game,

became the most important thing

in Tyler's life at a very young age.

[indistinct chattering in game]

He had aspirations of becoming

a professional Halo player.

[crowd cheering]

[indistinct announcement]

[Krebs] People who are good at this,

their name can be

widely known very quickly.

There are competitions all over the world

where people who basically do nothing

but play a specific game or set of games,

come together

and compete against each other.

[announcer] If he can continue to hold

this down for just a couple more seconds,

a perfect k*ll for Royal2.

And that's gonna do it, folks!

They are the Halo world champions.

[Krebs] The top prizes for these

can be just astronomical.

Endorsements, that kind of thing.

[victorious music playing]

You're gonna sit there behind

your mother's computer screen

You ain't got sh*t to say, b*tch!

[Koerner] There is coarseness

to gaming culture.

[gamer 1] You dumb c**t.

Learn how to play a proper character,

you f*cking stupid wh*re.

There is a treatment of others,

even that are friends,

that can be quite harsh.

- [gamer 2] Shut the f*ck up

- [gamer 3] Shut the f*ck up piece of sh*t!

[Koerner] Slight infractions

invite retaliation, name-calling.

Real harassment and abuse

can be part of this.

In the gaming culture

that Tyler belonged to,

to be extreme is something

that's welcomed and invited.

And extreme is also included with fun.

[gamer 4] Shut the f*ck up!

[Koerner] These Halo acquaintances he had

were really his closest friends.

Tyler Barriss was raised

by Halo in many ways.

[tense music playing]

[interviewer]

Tell me about how you got into this.

Like, what was your first b*mb threat?

[Barriss] My first b*mb threat

or the first time I sent a SWAT team

to someone's house?

[interviewer] Yeah, I assume

the b*mb threats came first, right?

[cold music playing]

[Barriss] Yeah, that was the first thing

I ever tried was evacuating a building.

The same person who swatted me

sent the b*mb squad to a school.

The first thing that I wanted to try to do

was make headlines like that.

I tried evacuating a college university.

That was the first thing

that I ever tried to evacuate

and it was on the news the same day.

At that point, I knew,

"Okay, since that worked, this is legit."

Like, I could probably do this

to any location in the United States.

It'll get evacuated as long

as the call sounds believable.

Wherever I do this

is going to get evacuated.

[indistinct online chatter]

[Koerner] So, Tyler starts to swat

other people in the Halo community.

But not only that,

starts making lots of b*mb threat calls

to high schools and junior highs.

He would call up and say,

"I've hidden a b*mb in a locker."

And, of course,

they had to close the school.

[Barriss] I had gone on a spree

of evacuating high schools,

and I was just making it

quite obvious on my Twitter

that I'm evacuating

numerous schools around the country.

And I have the ability to do this.

And then I wanted to

[interviewer] This is a time in which

there's a lot of school shootings.

Did that factor into your thinking?

[Barriss] I wasn't It had nothing to do

with school shootings.

I was saying there's bombs in the school,

they're going to detonate.

I never tried to do no school sh**ting

script or anything like that.

[interviewer]

But people are on edge

because there are so many

school shootings around the country.

Did that factor into your thinking?

[Barriss] That wasn't that didn't

make me think I was going to have

any more success

in having something evacuated.

It wasn't a relevant factor in my mind.

[dramatic music playing]

[Barriss] It's the fact that I knew

I was breaking the law

and I could get away with it.

And there was nothing

they could do to stop me.

I could keep doing it.

I could literally talk

to law enforcement over the phone,

lie to them, do something ill*gal,

send them somewhere,

have a place evacuated,

it's coming on the news and

there was nothing they could do about it.

They couldn't find me, couldn't arrest me.

Nothing they could do.

So I could do that as much as I wanted.

I was

I was like, unstoppable, you could say.

["Jane Doe"] A lot of people praised him.

People being like, "Wow, you're so cool,"

or, "Wow, can't believe you're doing this

and not getting caught." Stuff like that.

He's never had a job,

doesn't have any working skills.

He did not graduate from high school.

Swatting was a way for him

to earn notoriety.

It was about impressing other kids,

or other gamers online

and showing them that you could do

other things online than just game.

I kind of had to tell him, like,

"You don't really understand

how the real world works."

"People do get caught

for the things that they do."

[Koerner] Tyler's grandmother found it

very difficult to understand him.

There was a volatility

to her relationship with Tyler.

And she grew frightened of him.

[tense music playing]

[indistinct newscast]

[Koerner] In September of 2015,

his grandmother is watching

KABC TV newscast in Los Angeles.

And he says to his grandmother,

"Do you think

I could clear out that building?"

[Barriss] This is when I had just started.

I was sending the b*mb squad to schools

and having the schools evacuated

just to have it come on the news.

And I wanted to evacuate

something kind of bigger.

Instead of having the news

report on a school that got evacuated,

why don't I just

evacuate the news studio itself?

It's unusual for those

who report the news to become the news.

Well, that's what happened today to

the staff at KABC, in Southern California.

The station had to do

its four o'clock newscast

from a lawn down the street

after a b*mb threat forced everyone

in that building to evacuate.

[Barriss] They were actually

broadcasting live on Channel 7 News

when I made the phone call.

So I thought it would be

interesting to make that call,

and watch the TV

and see what happened on the TV.

[reporter] A b*mb squad and search dogs

combed through the building,

eventually ruling it safe to re-enter.

[intense music playing]

[Koerner] Tyler's grandmother

immediately suspects Tyler

and confronts him.

And says, "I know you did this."

He says, "Yes, I did it."

"But you will not tell another living soul

or else I will beat you bloody

and I will blow up our house."

And she's terrified.

However, she has a longtime friend

who's a college police officer

and she confides in him the fact

that Tyler did this b*mb threat.

[brooding music playing]

[Dorroh] My primary job is,

I'm an expl*sives investigator

for the b*mb squad.

Back in September, October 2015,

there were a series of swatting incidents

that were being called in

across the country.

There were also cases

involving b*mb threats,

and we weren't sure at the time

if they were all related or not.

But on September 29th,

I responded to two school b*mb threats

in the San Fernando Valley.

One was at a junior high,

one was at an elementary school.

We took the police reports,

and then got in contact

with the Glendale police officers.

They advised me that they had arrested

a person by the name of Tyler Barriss

after calling in a b*mb threat to

the news stations there in Glendale.

That's the first time I heard his name.

I had to take and piece together

the forensic trail.

The first thing I did

was met up with the 14-year-old student

who took the telephone call

at the office at the middle school.

We played the audio recordings for

six different swatting calls that I had.

And as soon as we hit

the, uh, Tyler Barriss audio recordings,

she was like she knew exactly.

She was emphatic that was him.

["Crossbow" by Tamar Aphek playing]

[Dorroh]

Tyler Barriss has a distinctive voice.

When I get these different calls,

I typically give them a title

so I can keep them all.

You know, "mush-mouth," "baritone."

Something along those lines.

With Tyler Barriss,

I used the word "snide."

Hit him with a hammer ♪

[Koerner] Tyler became very adept

at covering his tracks.

He always used the voice over IP services

to call from numbers that would dead-end

somewhere that was not connected to him.

[Dorroh] We had tied him into a number

of other cases across the country.

We had five LAX b*mb threats

that he was responsible for.

At one point I tied him

into seven in one week.

He would change his script along the way,

but it was the voice

that we always came back to.

[Koerner] They'd go and arrest Tyler

at the house in Chatsworth.

[police sirens blaring]

[Koerner] Ultimately, Tyler Barriss

pleads no contest to the charges,

and is sentenced to approximately

two years in the Los Angeles County Jail.

His grandmother, fearing for her own life,

had taken out

a restraining order against him.

[tense music playing]

[Barriss]

It was my first time ever being in jail.

Everything was all new to me.

I wasn't worried or scared.

It was more like, "Okay, well,

my bail was a million dollars,

and I'm stuck in this situation."

So, it just was what it was.

I was just doing the time

until I ended up getting out.

I got released from the county jail

after 16 months.

It was 2:00 a.m.

when I finally stepped foot outside.

I had nowhere to go.

I didn't have anywhere to stay.

I didn't know anyone in LA.

[tense music continues]

[Barriss] My grandmother,

she had already told me not to go back.

But I don't know how to be homeless

and survive in the streets

and do all that.

I just went back to the only place

that I knew, which was my house.

All the doors were locked

and I just camped out back all night,

until about 6:00 a.m.

I've lived with her my whole life.

I know what her routine is.

I kind of just hung out in the backyard

until she unlocked the back door

to do some laundry.

And I just walked in the house.

She was kind of shocked that I was there,

and she told me

that I wasn't supposed to be there.

He contacted the grandmother,

a violation of the restraining order.

And we put him

right back in custody again.

Tyler lives in his own little world.

He doesn't have any real-world friends.

He doesn't have any employers

or anything along those lines.

So I think his only lifeline that he has

is his grandmother

and he spoiled that relationship.

[Koerner] Tyler was then in jail

from January 2017 to August 2017.

It makes you really sad

to, like, grow up with somebody

and be really close with them

for such a long time,

and next thing you know, they're in jail

and their whole life is upside-down,

and you don't recognize

who's in front of you anymore.

We kind of lost contact

and I moved on with my life.

[Koerner] When Tyler is released,

he finds a homeless shelter to live in

near Exposition Park in Los Angeles.

He ends up spending all his time going

to a library near the homeless shelter.

[insistent music playing]

[Dorroh] He goes right back to doing

what he believes he's singularly best at.

[typing]

[Dorroh] He was using his cell phone

on the public Wi-Fi system

to make these calls.

And he would do it

for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes he would do it for pay.

[Koerner] This is a person

who's never held a traditional job,

and maybe lacks

a lot of the skills necessary to do so.

[interviewer]

How much were you making per swat?

[Barriss] I was charging people depending

on how much of a stranger they were to me,

anywhere from $20 to $50 per swat.

But, quite frankly,

I enjoyed the thrill of swatting.

I just enjoyed doing it.

Having it appear on the news

and then bragging about it on Twitter.

[interviewer] Yeah.

[Barriss] I just, for whatever reason,

enjoyed doing that.

[911 operator] Hi, what's going on?

[Barriss] My dad, he's going crazy,

he's got his g*n out.

[Dorroh] He enjoyed swatting people.

It was his form of entertainment.

[Barriss]

Yeah, I left some bombs at my high school

and they're gonna blow up in 15 minutes.

Just scared. I don't see why people

would want to harm children.

[Dorroh] He had about

a dozen different Twitter handles.

He would post links

to the news stories on it,

you know, as "proof,"

taking credit for it.

[reporter] We have new information on

the b*mb threat that led to an evacuation

of the Kay Bailey Hutchison

Convention Center.

[man]

We heard an alarm go off, like, ten times?

And they're like, "We need you to leave."

[Dorroh] During the time period

that he was out of custody,

we found approximately 37 other cases

that he had called in

b*mb threats or swattings.

[Barriss] I'm upset with some people.

They got me mad,

so now they're going to pay for it.

And I also have a g*n too.

[Dorroh]

He was like a one-man wrecking crew.

He was just out of control.

[somber music playing]

[Koerner] A couple weeks later,

the Federal Communications Commission

in Washington, DC

is having a very key meeting

about the future of net neutrality.

[Barriss] The FCC, broadcasting the vote

on net neutrality live on Twitter

had like 160,000 viewers, at the time.

And it was a federal building,

a little bit more high profile

than some of my other evacuations.

So I posted on Twitter

that I was gonna evacuate that building.

On advice of security,

we need to take a brief recess.

[clears throat softly]

[Koerner] This is a huge issue the FCC

is considering, of national importance.

And Tyler is well aware of

the importance to his community,

to gamers in particular.

And once again, he takes

credit for this and laughs about it.

He takes great pride that his power

now extends to the halls of government.

[Barriss] I wasn't trying to scare them

out of voting or whatever was going on.

That didn't concern me.

I just knew it was gonna bring

my Twitter a lot of attention.

And my Twitter was quite popular that day.

Gamers and hackers and people

doing dark criminal stuff online.

My Twitter was quite popular

in that scene of individuals.

Whoever it is running this Twitter

is swatting and evacuating everything.

[Dorroh] Since 2014,

I had been investigating

swatting cases more and more.

We all recognized,

even the gaming community recognized it,

as a dangerous practice.

But we never had that fatality

and we were just kind of waiting for it.

We knew it was going to happen.

- [g*nf*re]

- [man] Go, go, go!

[suspenseful music playing]

[g*nf*re in video game continues]

[Koerner] On December 28, 2017,

Shane Gaskill,

who lives in Wichita, Kansas,

is playing Call of Duty

with another gamer named Casey Viner,

who lives outside Cincinnati.

They're playing on a site

where you can actually win

small amounts of money

for winning one of these games.

In the midst of all this violent chaos,

Shane Gaskill accidentally shoots

Casey Viner's character to death.

[suspenseful music continues]

[Koerner] They lose the game

and don't get the $1.50 wager

that had been placed on the game.

Shane and Casey get into

a huge dispute about this online,

and Casey decides that he wants

to take revenge on Shane Gaskill.

Casey knew exactly where to go.

And so he contacted "SWAuTistic"

as Tyler was known online.

["Flagging" by Bettina Köster playing]

[Koerner] Shane Gaskill saw that

"SWAuTistic" was now following him

to collect information.

And then Shane Gaskill sent

a direct message to Tyler Barriss.

"Please try some sh*t. I'll be waiting."

"1033 West McCormick Street,

Wichita, Kansas."

This is a person telling

the ostensibly most feared swatter

that he doesn't have

the ba*ls to go through with it.

Tyler kind of had a God complex.

His ego was really big.

[Barriss] People are actually ignorant and

arrogant enough to give you their address

and tell you to come do something.

[911 operator]

This is 911. What's going on?

[Barriss] My mom and dad, they were

arguing and I shot him in the head.

And he's not breathing anymore.

[911 operator]

Do you have any weapons on you?

[Barriss] Yeah, I do. A handgun.

[911 operator] Okay. What's your address?

[Barriss] It's 1033 West McCormick Street.

["Flagging" by Bettina Köster

continues playing]

[sirens blaring]

[Koerner] The problem is, Shane Gaskill

had given the wrong address.

It wasn't Shane's house.

And the people who actually

lived in the house at that time

was the Finch family.

[somber music playing]

[Francis Finch]

Andrew Finch is my mom's brother.

October 27th, 2002,

my mother got into a car crash

on her way to Texas

to get me and my sister.

She rolled three times in her truck

and was pronounced dead on scene.

I was like one or two, I believe.

Andrew was like, maybe 16 or 17.

I believe that he had felt he had a duty

to take care of me and my sister.

He taught me

a lot of the things that I know now.

And that's why I regard him as my father

is because I feel like a father's duty

is to teach a young man

how to be a man in life.

[sizzling]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Ali Abdelhadi]

Andy actually cooked dinner for us.

That day he made pasta

with tomato sauce with cheese

and big pork chops.

We were just relaxing, chilling,

because it was just

a few days past Christmas.

There was a paved alley

right against the house

where there was this huge pothole.

[thud on pothole]

[Abdelhadi] When I heard one vehicle,

didn't seem odd.

It happens all the time.

[thud]

[tense music playing]

[Lisa] Andy got up to see who was there.

By this point,

police had surrounded the house.

And Andrew opens the door

and he's caught by police lights,

officers all over

to the east of the house,

to the west of the house,

directly in front of the house.

[Lisa]

He didn't know who was there for him.

You know, he didn't know.

[indistinct police radio chatter]

[officer 1] Hey, front door! Hands!

- [officer 2] Show your hands!

- [officer 1] He's right there.

[officer 3] Walk this way!

[Abdelhadi] I started hearing

commands from everywhere.

I didn't exactly make them out.

Shouting.

[Haze] And in the seven seconds

of opening the door,

an officer pulled the trigger

on his AR-15

[g*nsh*t]

and shot Andrew once

from, I believe, it was 67 yards away.

[somber music playing]

[Abdelhadi] He was on his face,

barely able to breathe.

[inhales]

And on his face

and laid out in front of the front door

to the inside of the house.

That's when Lisa came out.

She goes, "I heard Andy scream.

What's going on?"

I said, "I don't know.

I'm getting ready to find out."

I'm looking at him, possibly dying,

couldn't tell her that.

Figured the next shot

might be coming at me.

I didn't know who was sh**ting.

And then they're on their intercom saying,

"Everyone get out from the east side."

[Lisa]

Telling us to come out with our hands up.

[Haze] Dispatch was actually still

on the phone with Tyler at this point.

Tyler actually

stayed on the phone with 911

for 16 minutes after the sh**ting.

- [Barriss] Hello?

- [911 operator] I'm still here, okay?

[Barriss] Yeah, me too.

[Haze] Despite them still being on phone

with the alleged hostage-taker,

the family was dragged outside,

barefoot, handcuffed.

The family was basically

treated as criminals,

while WPD tore through the house.

[Barriss] My dad isn't breathing.

It's kind of giving me anxiety

and making me, like, paranoid.

[Abdelhadi] They kept asking us,

"Who else is up there?"

So we're confused at that point.

We didn't know what happened,

why they were there.

I kept saying, "Why are you guys here?"

But their confusion

was even more than our confusion.

They couldn't tell us what's going on.

They kept asking

who else was in the house.

[Francis]

I was at my friend Isaac's house

and I started getting these texts,

like, "Are you okay?"

"There's cops at your house."

"Hey, are you good?"

"Do you know what's going on?"

I'm just, "I don't know.

I'm not at my house right now."

And then like an hour goes by, maybe two,

articles start coming out,

"Man shot at 1033 West McCormick."

"Unidentified man shot at"

I almost like,

the moment I saw "Man shot at" I

I almost knew, like, automatically.

And that's when I found out it was him.

I just like, dropped down

to my knees at that point,

not being able to breathe.

I remember

almost forgetting, like, to inhale.

I just sat there in disbelief.

[somber music continues playing]

[Haze] Andrew's niece Adelina

lived with the family.

I believe she was 17

at the time of the sh**ting.

She was actually forced

to step over Andrew

as he was laying on the floor,

bleeding out and gasping for air.

[Francis]

They left him there on the ground

until all of it was over with.

So she had to walk over his body,

and look at him and see him,

and then get handcuffed outside.

[Haze] Andrew laid there

for roughly 15 to 20 minutes

before receiving

any medical attention whatsoever.

Officers were actually told

to not move the body,

and step over him,

and ambulance was on-scene,

and the ambulance was held back.

Instead of going to the hospital

with their family member,

they were taken downtown for questioning.

[somber music continues]

[Abdelhadi] In the interrogation room,

the detective said,

"Would you know of someone that is

holding a grudge against you or the house

that would actually make

a false call to create chaos?"

I said, "Not necessarily, no, why?"

"You haven't told me, how is Andy?"

"'Cause I know when

I saw him inside the house,

he was having a hard time breathing."

"Did he get better?

Did they take him to the hospital?"

He said, "I am very sorry, Ali,

but he did not survive his wounds."

[somber music continues]

[Lisa] I did not cry.

I did not get hysterical.

I became determined

and was going to do what I needed to

to make sure this was handled.

For justice.

You know, I didn't know if I was

going to be able to uphold myself

as a human being after that day.

[distant g*nshots

and grunting in video game]

[Koerner] About an hour and a half

after Andy Finch was shot,

Shane Gaskill sent a Twitter DM to Tyler.

"This sh*t has me dying.

They showed up to my old house, ret*rd."

To him this was the funniest thing ever,

that he basically duped

the notorious Tyler Barriss

into swatting the wrong house.

Upon revealing this,

Tyler defends himself and says,

"You gave an address

that you don't live at,

but you were acting tough,

LOL, so you're a b*tch."

Gaskill said, "Anyways,

good job, but you failed the mission

because I trolled

the f*ck outta you guys."

And they have a petty dispute

over who has bragging rights,

who emerged victorious in this scenario.

Right now, a false 911 call led to

a deadly officer-involved sh**ting in

[Koerner] A couple hours later,

the local newscast in Wichita

start carrying reports about this death

on West McCormick Street.

And Gaskill realizes what's happened.

And so he reaches out

to both Tyler and Casey Viner and says,

"You guys need to delete everything.

This is a m*rder case now."

[brooding music plays]

[Haze] We were actually trying

to identify Tyler before the FBI did.

I understand social media

and the Internet pretty well, so,

that was probably 30 minutes

of actually constructing what happened.

He was decent at hiding his real name,

but he was not good at hiding

his digital footprint whatsoever.

There were accounts that he would just pop

back and forth through,

with "SWAuTistic" and "GoredTutor36"

being the two main ones.

I finally reached out to

the "GoredTutor36" account,

and said "Any chance you would like

to talk to us about last night's swat?"

"We really do want to hear your side."

Tyler actually responded with,

"Hmm. Hi. Here's my story."

And he produced a screenshot

that was actually Shane Gaskill

encouraging him and egging him on

and giving him a previous address

that his family had lived at.

Basically, that was Tyler saying

that Shane encouraged him

to swat that address.

And I said, "I understand that,

but why did he send it to you?"

"Like is it a paying gig

or just entertainment value?"

"How did you even get into swatting?"

And he put, "I was swatted once."

I put, "No sh*t. What happened with that?"

And he put, "Well, I didn't die."

Man, he's a f*cking little prick.

[chuckling]

I don't even put

the full blame on him, but, man

He's just such a little f*cking prick.

- Just that one sentence. "I didn't die."

- [interviewer] "I didn't die."

After he knows, by the way,

that someone did die in this circumstance.

Yeah.

[Haze] When word got out

that these three gamers

got an innocent man k*lled

by doing a swatting,

the Internet responded

and they were not happy

about what had happened.

He even made a post saying,

"Hypothetically speaking,

let's say I just k*ll myself right now

for the purpose of this

getting through your guys' heads."

"Will justice have been served?"

One user responded, "I would be happier."

Another one responded,

"You won't be missed."

"You were the cause."

"Going to jail, bro."

"Lol I got someone k*lled

but It's Just A Prank Bro

so it's perfectly fine."

That's actually a pretty good summary

of how he tried to play it off.

[Koerner] A tremendous amount

of abuse is hurled his way.

And so when a big YouTube star

reaches out to him,

he consents to be interviewed.

[Keemstar] Ladies and gentlemen, we have

the alleged swatter on here, "SWAuTistic."

So you swatted that address. Correct?

- [Barriss] Sure.

- And then this guy gets k*lled.

[Barriss]

That's what happened, I guess.

And you said this on Twitter.

You said, "I didn't get anyone k*lled

because I didn't discharge a weapon."

Do you take any responsibility

for what happened?

[Barriss] Um, the argument can be made

that the police would've never showed up

if I didn't make the call.

However, I don't believe

that I'm the only guilty party involved

in this whole incident,

considering I was contacted

and almost instructed to swat,

and taunted to swat that address,

you could point the finger

at the cop who k*lled someone,

at the guy who made the call,

at the person who provided the address,

saying, "Oh, look, this is where I live.

Go ahead and swat me!"

Uh, so it's really debatable.

[Dorroh] I recognized

Tyler Barriss's voice right off the bat.

I had five investigators

all huddle around my phone

and we're sitting there watching it

on my department phone.

[Barriss] It really sucks being connected

to this incident in any f*cking way,

and if I could rewind, I would,

'cause this is all stupid.

It fit into his profile wanting to brag,

wanting the recognition, everything.

Are you worried that they'll find you?

That the FBI will find you and you'll

be arrested and charged for this?

[Barriss] Currently, not so much.

[tense music playing]

[Koerner] One person posts on Twitter

that they know that this is

the same person responsible

for the KABC TV b*mb threats in 2015,

and the police

are already investigating this.

And they could see on his Twitter feed,

he's taking direct responsibility for

what occurred on West McCormick Street.

So, it doesn't take much detective work

to have a prime suspect in this case.

[Dorroh] The surveillance team

went to his address

that was listed on his California ID card,

and followed him from there on foot

to the library.

[suspenseful music playing]

[interviewer] Did it ever occur to you

in all of this that someone might die?

[Barriss] No, that never crossed my mind.

I've never k*lled anyone,

so I don't know what that feels like.

But I've also never been responsible

for someone dying.

But-but-but the consequences of

k*lling someone, from what I know,

are pretty severe.

You can get life in prison,

you can get the death sentence.

So being responsible for someone dying

I was pretty much

the sole reason that the police

even went to that house.

So when I found out someone died at

the house that I sent the SWAT team to,

I was I couldn't

It was a very surreal moment for me.

[interviewer] Were you worried more

about the ramifications on you,

or the fact

that someone's life was just taken?

[Barriss] Well, you I was

It was it was both.

I didn't immediately

feel guilty that someone died.

I didn't know what to think.

It's almost like life wasn't real anymore.

[reporter 1] Police have arrested

a 25-year-old man in Los Angeles.

[reporter 2]

This is 25-year-old Tyler Barriss.

We've learned that the LAPD

has taken him into custody

and he is facing

potential charges in this case.

In 2015, he was arrested because

he called in b*mb threats

into a CNN-affiliate ABC,

a television station in California.

He eventually served

two years in that case,

so this certainly

would not be the first time

that he's done some

serious damage with his phone.

[Haze] I got over there

for the first time that following night.

There was still blood on the front porch,

on the carpet of the entryway.

And that's when

I did my first interview with Lisa.

We're here with the mother

of last night's

Wichita Police Department sh**ting victim.

[Haze] It's like, "I don't"

"I don't really know how to tell you this,

but it was a $1.50 bet

on Call of Duty Online."

"That's the root of all this."

[clicks tongue]

I mean, a $1.50 bet.

I think it was

disgusting.

But it happened,

and they're going to have to face it.

Everybody's gonna have to deal with it

because it did happen.

You know? Even myself.

I have to deal with it.

[dramatic music playing]

[Haze]

No matter how big of an as*h*le he is,

no matter how terrible a person he is,

at the end of the day,

Tyler didn't pull the trigger.

- [indistinct yelling]

- [g*nsh*t]

[Haze] Twelve other officers

that night did not pull a trigger.

There was one officer

that pulled a trigger.

The reaction was anger in this area.

[woman] It was a senseless m*rder

and we hope to find out

more information as it comes out.

We need to stand out and make sure

things like this don't happen,

hold people accountable,

and be here for those

who have lost this great man,

28 years young.

[vigil attendee] I think people

are pretty horrified about what happened.

They are fearful.

They know it could've happened to anybody.

If we have a police force

which does the opposite

of de-escalation in situations like this,

you have these tragedies.

[Haze] In Wichita, in Kansas in general,

they don't name the officers.

They protect the officers.

[reporter] Will we be able to get

the name of the officer involved?

Yeah, it's important to know

that the department has a long history

of not releasing names of officers

involved in shootings.

[Dion Lefler] It's very difficult

to get information on these incidents.

Kansas has possibly the weakest

open records law in the country.

They basically hope you don't find out

and the statute of limitations expires

so they don't have to pay out on a case.

The national average for shootings

was about one for every 1300 officers.

In Wichita, 2012,

we had one sh**ting death

for every 120 officers, approximately.

So we were about 11 times higher than

the national average here in Wichita.

[dramatic music continues]

[Haze] I received an email

and the person said it had been a minute

"since I've given you anything."

"Your sh**ter's Justin Rapp."

[brooding music playing]

[interviewer]

You're first to publish his name.

[Haze] Yes.

[Ann Jones] Justin Rapp has been

with our department now eight years.

He has formal military training.

He has been featured

in episodes of Cops a couple of times.

[Rapp] Get on the ground, right now!

He has gotten many reports

of "use of force" against him.

[inaudible]

[Haze] We've been told there is around

a dozen incident reports against Justin

before the sh**ting of Andrew Finch.

On one of our highway overpasses

we put "Arrest Officer Rapp."

We just wanted to make sure

Rapp's name stayed important.

That's also why we made the T-shirts.

One of my friends had seen that movie,

The Three Billboards or whatever.

And he said, "Why don't we do that?"

[reporter] Billboards are designed

to catch your attention,

but four digital billboards in Wichita

aren't marketed towards

getting your money.

They're asking for justice.

[Jones] He didn't follow any procedure,

any protocol.

He didn't even bother to think

that this guy might be a hostage.

He just shot him dead

and it could have happened to any of us.

So I think that's why the community

has stayed so involved

in pushing for the arrest of Justin Rapp.

He needs to be charged

for the m*rder of Andrew Finch.

express thoughts and prayers

[Lisa] The cops can't just go around

sh**ting people without any consequences.

I mean, that cop m*rder*d my son.

[Lisa] My granddaughter saw the sh**ting

and had to see her uncle lay there dying.

She's only 17,

but she's had a lot of trauma in her life.

And I don't know if she'll survive this.

I don't know.

[Francis] I'm not going to lie,

I did contemplate suicide,

many times after that.

You know?

But

I just It's just It's just

Hold on, I'm sorry.

[unsettling music playing]

We're going to teach you how to make cake.

[Haze] Adelina clearly had some issues

with what had happened.

[Lisa] She was forced

to see her father figure dying.

She could not stand

the constant nightmares and flashbacks.

And she could not stand to be alone.

Exactly a year and two weeks, exactly,

this past January 11th

Adelina

shot herself

in the head.

[delicate music playing]

[giggling softly]

[Lefler] And then her boyfriend,

who found her having just shot herself,

he wound up committing suicide too.

So really the death toll from this

is three, not one.

[Francis]

I'm surprised I'm still here today.

I'm surprised I'm sitting here

doing this interview today, because

I thought it was going

to be me that did it.

That night, she had taken me to work,

and she's supposed

to pick me up at ten o'clock

and we're supposed to hang out afterwards.

Well, my cousin Jaden had came

and he picked me up

and I had told Adelina,

[voice breaks] "You don't have

to come pick me up. It's okay."

So, I was supposed to be with her,

at the same exact time

that she had k*lled herself.

And I wasn't.

I just feel like I could have stopped it.

I know her.

[sniffles]

That's why I should have seen

that something was wrong.

There was There was, like

[sighs deeply]

[judge] Madam Clerk,

can you call the next item, please?

[county clerk]

Lisa Finch, Andrew Finch sh**ting.

[Lisa] The death of my son

has changed every iota of my being.

I never wanted to be in the public eye.

My preference before this

was staying at home

and not to be put on display.

The person I was before no longer exists.

The concept of due process

goes back as far to 1215 A.D.

from Clause 39 of the Magna Carta.

This should indicate

that due process is not new.

Shouldn't law enforcement

and public officials be aware

and abide by this constitutional right?

[judge] L-Lisa.

Can you wrap it up right quick?

You've gone over five minutes. So

My time has been taken away from me, sir.

- This is my time. Are you? Do you

- Right.

[woman] She can have my five minutes.

- [judge] She can't. That's not the rules.

- You work for the public.

- [judge] Correct.

- I'm taking my time.

I'm gonna make them so uncomfortable.

I am.

And I'm going to continue

talking about this

[Jones] She's strong. And she's a fighter.

- And, uh

- [applause]

she's not going to let them

get away with this.

She's just not.

[tense music playing]

[Marc Bennett] To charge Officer Number 1

would require evidence,

not 20/20 hindsight.

That it was unreasonable for him

to believe in that moment

that the man who came to the door

posed a risk to the officers

near the house,

there is insufficient evidence to overcome

self-defense immunity under Kansas law.

So under Kansas law

and the facts of this case,

I conclude that no charges

will be filed against the officer

for the death of Andrew Finch.

[reporter] Deputy Chief Troy Livingston

says it was in this moment

when Finch dropped his hand,

an officer thought

he reached for a weapon.

You see the officer pull the trigger

on the lower left side of the screen.

You have officers from the other side

also giving commands

and they were all consistent about

"Put your hands up, walk towards us,"

um, but he continued to

drop them down by his waistband.

[tense music fades]

[dramatic music playing]

[Lefler] I don't think

that complete exoneration

was what most people were expecting,

or that there wouldn't

be any charges filed.

That kind of reverberated

through the community.

[Lorrie Hernandez] When I got back here,

my sister said, "You need to sit down."

"I got to tell you some bad news

and you're not going to want to hear it."

[reporter] Andrew Finch's family

is upset to learn

that police will not face charges

for the sh**ting.

This decision almost

four months after his death.

[SWAT officer] Walk this way!

Walk

[g*nsh*t]

[Haze] Not even worth going to trial.

Although Casey, Shane, and Tyler,

all three are.

Casey asked somebody to do a swatting.

Shane Gaskill gave an address,

and talked sh*t to somebody.

And these guys got charged.

Justin Rapp pulled the trigger

that k*lled Andrew Finch,

and he didn't even get

a slap on the wrist.

He still has his job.

[cold music playing]

[Haze] We did learn in September of 2021

that Justin was actually

involved in two other shootings

before the Andrew Finch sh**ting.

Hello, sir, are you Tyler Barriss?

Yes.

Mr. Barriss, I show you're currently

charged with involuntary manslaughter,

giving false alarm, and interference

with law enforcement officers.

Your next court date

is January 25th at 9:00 a.m.

Do you have any questions, sir?

- No, I don't.

- All right, thank you.

Tyler is facing his

involuntary manslaughter charge

at the state level in Kansas.

In other federal jurisdictions,

he's, uh, charged with crimes

associated to his swatting,

his b*mb threats,

of which there are many, many counts,

and he's able to negotiate a global plea

to the federal charges that roll

all of the cases into one,

and then Tyler pleads guilty.

[reporter] Tyler Barriss sentenced today

to 20 years behind bars

after pleading guilty

for a swatting prank that turned deadly.

The longest prison sentence in the country

ever imposed for the practice of swatting.

We hope that this will send

a strong message.

[interviewer]

Tyler Barriss got 20 years in prison.

Yeah.

- What do you think about that?

- I think it's good.

[exhales]

You know, like my son said,

we have to forgive people.

Because that's what

we're supposed to do,

according to our faith.

And I'm trying to forgive.

[Francis]

These are just a few of his drawings.

On my birthday,

he would always draw stuff out for me.

This one right here

is one of my favorites.

The Internet, well, all it did is

bring two idiots together

playing a video game.

Technology benefits

people with brains, intelligent people.

But when technology is used by idiots,

it creates chaos and it creates disasters

and that's exactly what happened.

[Francis] The gaming community,

I believe, can be very toxic,

can be very, very negative.

Sometimes I'll get messages, like, um,

"If you keep on doing that

I'm gonna trace your IP address"

and fry my router or something like that.

Like, take down my Internet.

They'll say like, "Go f*ck yourself,"

you know, "Go k*ll yourself."

"I'm gonna go swat your house."

[g*nf*re]

But, uh, I like it because

it takes me out of the world.

It takes me into my own mindset.

I have full control

of everything that I do.

I can do whatever I want

within the parameters of that game.

Just go on there

and beat the living sh*t out of somebody,

over and over and over again.

And then I'm not angry anymore.

[emotional music playing]

[Francis]

I feel as if it's a therapy for me.

It's not just something

that I do just for fun.

It keeps me from thinking about

the situation, pretty much.

I cannot make any action

to make all this go away.

You know, I can't just sit here

and go like this,

and now my life's going back to normal.

But if I wanted to,

I could do that in a video game

and I find that pretty cool. You know?

That's what I like about that.

[emotional music soaring]

[man 1] We are in an informational crisis

that is destroying us.

[woman] The Internet just went crazy.

You have to question

your own sense of reality.

[man 2] I was called the hit man.

Accused of taking money

in order to explicitly cover up a m*rder.

[closing theme music playing]