Swatter Tyler Barriss, 26, pleaded guilty yesterday to the crimes that led police to forcibly enter the home of Wichita resident Andrew Finch, who died from an officer’s gunshot wound. Barriss originally pleaded not guilty to this fatal instance of swatting, which occurred over a dispute in Call of Duty in 2017.
The Associated Press reports that Barriss pleaded guilty to 51 charges in a plea deal and could face between 20 and 25 years in prison. The charges include threatening to kill another person, making interstate threats and conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
Barriss’s criminal history is long and dotted with hoax police reports, including calling in phony bomb threats to the FBI, the FCC, schools, malls and television stations, according to the Wichita Eagle.
On occasion, he did this on behalf of others, including Casey Viner, 18, who enlisted Barriss to swat somebody with whom Viner played Call of Duty.
Viner had lost a reported $US1.50 ($2) on a bet and had become enraged. He enlisted Barriss, who called police from California on December 28, 2017. Barriss pretended there was a hostage situation at the Wichita house that previously belonged to Viner’s Call of Duty enemy. When police arrived at the house, they encountered Andrew Finch, a new resident of the home.
As NPR reported at the time:
Officers soon flanked the house on three sides and readied themselves for a confrontation, Livingston said in his press conference. Finch appeared at the door to the house and, following verbal commands from the officers, stepped forward with his hands up. At numerous points, however, he reached for his waistband.
Fearful that Finch was going for a firearm, an officer discharged one round, killing the father of two, said Livingston.
That officer did not face charges. Earlier this year, Finch’s family filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city. Their lawyer cited the officers’ excessive force, the Wichita Eagle reported.
You can view the plea agreement here:
Comments
26 responses to “Fatal Call Of Duty Swatter Pleads Guilty To 51 Charges”
Imagine being this stupid. Jesus. This is not even a one time mistake. Prison is going to be a harsh time for this bloke.
It’s not only stupid but ridiculously dangerous. These people 100% know what they are doing is wrong, there is no excuse.
Good. I hope the 1st sentence he hears inside is “You sure got a purdy mouth, boy…”
We can’t know that for sure, he might give a fantastic BJ.
Swatter is obviously a dick but why would you keep reaching for your waist when surrounded by police pointing guns at you?
Without bodycam footage, I think it might be reasonable to believe that the police are covering for one another.
There is bodycam footage dimwit.
Probably baggy pajamas falling down or something. It’s a reflex.
Take the case of the drunken guy who was shot by several officers, in his hotel hallway, while sobbing that he didn’t want to die and please don’t shoot him (as they were repeatedly threatening to do). In thise case, it was because after he complied with all the ‘do as we say or die’ instructions he was given, he was told to put his hands on his head, get on his knees, then get on his belly and crawl towards the officers.
During the crawling, his pants came off from the friction against the carpet. He reached down to pull his sweatpants up, which was a terribly frightening and life-threatening gesture that gave the burly, terrified officers with firearms pointed at him all the reason they needed to execute the weeping drunk on the floor.
What the literal fuck?!
Well in yankeeland anyone and everyone could have a gun stashed in their slacks.
Getting your head blown off for trying to pull your dacks up is a small price to pay for freedom.
According to many it was a “clean kill”.
Yeah. And this was far from an isolated incident. In the US, police are basically Judge Dredd. Police murders of unarmed civilians happen with gut-turning regularity, and there are more often than not no charges against the officers involved, let alone convictions.
It doesn’t take long to discover a truly rage-inducing-sized list of examples of officers murdering innocents for no good reason with no justice afterwards. Given the nation’s fondness for the 2nd amendment, I’m genuinely surprised they haven’t started an armed revolt or at the very least widespread vigilantism against their so-called ‘peace’ officers.
Frankly, it’s one of the few signs of hope the nation has for turning their situation around.
This isn’t even an exaggeration. Yankee cops are rigorously trained to respond with lethally excessive force to even the slightest SUGGESTION that someone may be posing vaguely possible threat to someone in some manner or another. They’re a government-backed army of vicious psychopathic killers. “Serve and protect”, ladies and gentlemen!
You hear about earlier this week where the cops burst in on a scene where a gunman had already been subdued by a security guard, who had him pinned on the floor with a gun trained on him, and despite the fact that the guard was wearing a hat with “Security” on it and bystanders were screaming “HE’S A SECURITY GUARD!” at them, they shot THE GUARD dead? (The actual gunman was unharmed, because the security guard hadn’t had to murder him in cold blood to subdue him.) To be fair, he WAS black, which is apparently a good enough reason to shoot anyone in America…
Yes. And those murderers are going to get away with it.
Mind-bogglingly, there isn’t even a central US government agency that keeps accurate records of the number of people killed by police. It’s left to other monitoring groups to try and keep track of it.
(Washington Post says it’s 846 so far this year)
Yeah lets just build a wall around the USA, keep them in there.
Well the first point is whether he did nor didn’t do that.
Certainly would be far from the first time the police report into a shooting had items added to it to add justification for the shooting.
But if he did it may have been because he was in the most casual clothes he had and his pants were falling down and in his mind hadn’t done anything wrong. Or he had a nervous reaction and was subconsciously checking for his keys or some similar reassurance tic.
Try thinking clearly when you open your door to a squad of armed officers with their guns all pointed at you.
Hope the piece of shit rots in prison for a long time. The guy who enlisted him to make the call should also be put away.
A strong message needs to be sent to these idiots who waste emergency services time and create dangerous situations.
20-25 even after a guilty plea is a pretty sizable chunk of prison time. He could be 50 when he comes out. Nothing will bring back the life of the guy who was killed because of Barriss, we can only hope that the prison time teaches him how bad what he did was.
Considering this fool was a constant repeat offender i doubt he will learn anything much regardless how long he is in… he took the guilty plea bargain probably to make sure he avoided life which means he can try to get out earliet on parole
Maybe so, but there’s always a chance. 25 years is a long time to reflect on why you’re locked up.
He deserves everything he gets, but you’d have to assume there’s something seriously wrong with his brain based on his history of offending.
It’s hard to call it something “seriously wrong” because it’s so distressingly common in today’s society- it’s just a completely sociopathic refusal to acknowledge that other people actually matter at all in even the slightest way. It’s EVERYWHERE. Whenever you see some whiny shit getting up in arms about their “free speech” being impugned because people take issue with the fact that they’re acting in a very offensive manner, what you’re seeing is a failure to grasp the fairly simple idea that offending people is something you should try to AVOID, not AIM FOR! People these days simply don’t accept that other people are in any way important, that their feelings matter, that their wants and needs are as valid as their own. And so we come to situations where a guy gets murdered over a matter of $1.50.
The thing that nearly everyone forgets is the free speech law is about the government restricting their free speech. Anyone else can tell them to bugger off. Google is not the government, they don’t have to host your hateful blog etc.
I’m curious what penalty the arsehole who hired him got.
I know there’s no legal charge against hiring a swatter, but his actions directly caused some innocent guys death. Accessory to murder? Conspiracy to cause harm, something.
Agree