This week the United States sent a powerful message against swatting , a type of “joke” well known in the world of video games that consists of reporting a supposed crime to the authorities so that they send a SWAT team to solve it. However, for the North American country the swatting is not a joke, but a criminal practice that can result in the death of innocent people.

This has been described by Kansas District Attorney Stephen McAllister after hearing the sentence of Tyler Barriss, a 26-year-old gamer who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for calling police in Wichita, Kansas in 2017 to report a crime false that caused the death of a stranger. Barriss pleaded guilty to the crime in court and took responsibility for 51 other crimes related to false calls and threats.

“Hopefully [the sentence] sent a strong message about swatting, a youthful and pointless practice,” said McAllister. “We would like to put an end to this practice in the gaming community and in any other [in which it is practiced]. Swatting, as I said before, is not a joke. ”

In 2017, Barriss called the authorities pretending to be the tenant of a house in Wichita. He told the police that he had killed his father and that he had kidnapped his mother and brother, adding that he had pumped gas throughout the house and planned to light it.

Everything Barriss told the police, of course, was a lie. In fact, Barriss was playing the joke on behalf of another player, Casey Viner, who was disgusted with a colleague, Shake Gaskill, for a $ 1.50 bet on World of Warcraft. Viner gave Barriss what he thought was Gaskill’s address so he could give it to the police.

Source: BBC