Why a Twitter user claims to have made the ‘swatting’ call that led police to kill a man

A professional “swatter” — someone who pranks armed police into raiding the homes of innocent people — has claimed responsibility for placing a fake 911 call that led an officer to kill a man in Wichita.

Police were lured to the home of Andrew Finch, 28, on Thursday evening by a caller who falsely claimed to be inside with hostages and a gun.

Knowing nothing of the report, Finch went to the door as officers surrounded his home and was fatally shot on his porch.

In tweets and interviews, a man known online as “Swautistic” said he had placed the 911 call — which in his view was a routine hoax gone badly wrong.

“Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” Swautistic told reporter Brian Krebs on Friday. “But I began making $ doing some swat requests.”

Several hours later, Los Angeles police arrested a 25-year-old named Tyler Barriss in connection with Finch’s death. According to KABC, he had been arrested two years earlier for making hoax bomb threats to their TV station.

[A police officer fatally shot a man while responding to an emergency call now called a ‘swatting’ prank]

Police have not said whether Barriss and Swautistic are the same person, or said who called them to the house, or why. But local reports suggest that Finch — a father of two — may have been randomly caught up in a feud between two videogamers who obtained his address.

The two unnamed gamers got into an argument over a match of Call of Duty on Thursday, according to the Wichita Eagle. Screenshots of the spat show that one of them dared the other to swat him — and for some reason gave out Finch’s address.