At 4am on Thursday, a police helicopter descended on the street an unnamed Bungie executive resides on, and cops surrounded his home. Authorities had been told the exec “had an assault rifle and he had placed explosives in the yard and he was holding a family hostage”.
He had of course done nothing of the sort. The call – the latest incident of “swatting” to affect a member of the video game industry – had been a hoax, and when police got in touch with the suspect to confirm what was happening, he emerged from his home in his bathrobe “very confused at what was going on”.
According to KOMO News, local police “believe the suspect has ties to the video game community”.
“Maybe a contractor for his work or someone at his work who didn’t have a great experience with him [made the call], Deputy Jason Houck from the King County Sheriff’s Office told the station.
A spokesperson for Bungie says the victim of the hoax “is ok and didn’t want to discuss the incident.”
Cops surround home of video game exec after high-tech hoax [KOMO]
Comments
19 responses to “Bungie Executive Swatted, Finds Police Chopper Over His House”
All its gonna take is one fresh cop with an itchy trigger finger to turn these hoaxes into a tragedy.
True. Stupid prank is stupid. Wouldn’t take much for the authorities to trace calls to put this stupid thing to rest
i though it already happened
Yeah, didn’t some kid’s dad take two in the chest when the po-po raided his house, or was that a bogus story?
I know a kid got shot and killed for bringing a wii remote to the door when answering a routine parole check on his Dad. Haven’t heard of a swatting death yet, though.
That’s just awful. Surely taking that extra second to see what the kid is holding is worth it.
Do you wonder if someone has ever answered the door to police with a gun and then shot the police?
Yes, that’s probably happened before.
But they were making a routine parole visit and having the kid answer the door is a situation where you can risk that extra time. They’ve been there before with no problems and a kid answered the door.
They aren’t turning up to a Domestic Violence situation or to a report of shots fired. Where I’d be a lot more sympathetic towards the police making a snap decision and discharging their weapon.
Context matters, without the article I don’t have any details but it does look bad.
It has happened, but just like a soldier’s job involves danger, so does a police officer’s.
They have a duty of care. They have protocol and procedure. They have been allowed by society to be armed and dangerous on the proviso that they are a net positive for society and if they can’t do their due diligence, they shouldn’t be there.
Edit: By shooting the child faster than they could recognise a plastic toy, they must have knocked on the door with weapons drawn. Unless there is a serious reason for them to suspect clear and immediate danger, they have broken rule number 1 of firearm safety: Don’t point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot.
Truth. Well. Except… it’s really don’t point your weapon at anything you do not intend to kill.
Firearms are for killing. Not warning shots, not crippling, not neutralizing non-lethally… guns are for killing. Just killing. If you don’t expect to need to kill, you don’t point your gun. That’s the rule.
For some reason I can’t reply to Transientmind.
Yes. I actually used the wrong word. Guns are a tool specifically designed to kill. You don’t pull out a cleaver unless you intend to cleave. You don’t start a chainsaw unless you intend to cut wood. You don’t draw a gun unless you intend to kill.
They shot a grandma once. They have these things called ‘no knock raids’. If you’re an old woman in a bad neighbourhood and people come busting through your door, I’d shoot too. They returned fire and killed her.
Isn’t constantly front-paging these just fuelling it?
Nobody ever stopped a terrible, recurring problem by being quiet about it.
Another concern is that someone actually had the resources to find out where the guy lives.
Can’t they trace these calls and arrest the jerks making them?
A payphone and a cap would quickly turn that job into something much, much more difficult.
This happend to me about 20yrs ago, the Queensland SWAT team showed up on front my front yard they even blocked off access to my street, a friend tried to visit was told to turn around by police and they had road blocks and everything.
The police showed up because there was a report of gun fire, which was true, in Counter Strike! I think what happened was instead of the neighbour complaining I was playing a video game too loud, they called the police to say I was shooting guns.
Iirc this was about the time of an escaped prisoner so the police must have been on heightened alert and couldn’t take any reports as hoaxes.
Holy dooley! That’s actually crazy!