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By Doha Madani
A California man was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for making a hoax 911 call about a hostage situation in Kansas that ended up with police fatally shooting an innocent man at that address.
Tyler Rai Barriss pleaded guilty in November to a total of 51 charges stemming from phony emergency calls he made, including one count of making a false report resulting in a death. He admitted to years of “swatting,” the act of falsely reporting a serious crime with the aim of drawing a massive police response to the home of an unsuspecting target.
Barriss agreed to serve 20 to 25 years in federal prison as part of a plea agreement, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of Los Angeles.
On Dec. 28, 2017, Barriss, who lives in Los Angeles, contacted police to say he was at a home in Wichita, Kansas, where he claimed he had fatally shot his father and was holding the rest of the family hostage.
Responding officers demanded that anyone inside that McCormick Street home come out.
Confused, Andrew Finch, 28, stepped outside where he raised and dropped his hands several times before an officer opened fire killing him, officials said.
Finch’s family is suing the police and the city of Wichita for his death.
Barriss called in that tragic threat at the behest of two gamers, Casey Viner, 18, and Shane Gaskill, 25, authorities said. Viner asked Barriss to make the call as an act of retaliation against Gaskill after a game of “Call of Duty” ended badly.
Barriss then taunted Gaskill in Twitter direct messages, before Gaskill challenged the California man to swat him, according to court records. Gaskill gave Barriss the address to a home where Gaskill had once lived that was then occupied by Finch’s family.
False calls connected to Barriss between 2015 and 2017 happened in Ohio, Nevada, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Massachusetts, MIssouri, Maine, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Indiana, Michigan, Florida, Connecticut and New York.