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Tyler Raj Barriss, a 25-year-old serial “swatter” whose phony emergency call to Kansas police last month triggered a fatal shooting, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and faces up to eleven years in prison.
Tyler Raj Barriss, in an undated selfie.
Barriss’s online alias — “SWAuTistic” — is a nod to a dangerous hoax known as “swatting,” in which the perpetrator spoofs a call about a hostage situation or other violent crime in progress in the hopes of tricking police into responding at a particular address with potentially deadly force.
Barriss was arrested in Los Angeles this month for alerting authorities in Kansas to a fake hostage situation at an address in Wichita, Kansas on Dec. 28, 2017.
Police responding to the alert surrounded the home at the address Barriss provided and shot 28-year old Andrew Finch as he emerged from the doorway of his mother’s home. Finch, a father of two, was unarmed, and died shortly after being shot by police.
The officer who fired the shot that killed Finch has been identified as a seven-year veteran with the Wichita department. He has been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation.
Following his arrest, Barriss was extradited to a Wichita jail, where he had his first court appearance via video on Friday. The Los Angeles Times reports that Barriss was charged with involuntary manslaughter and could face up to 11 years and three months in prison if convicted.
The moment that police in Kansas fired a single shot that killed Andrew Finch (in doorway of his mother’s home).
Barriss also was charged with making a false alarm — a felony offense in Kansas. His bond was set at $500,000.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett told the The LA Times Barriss made the fake emergency call at the urging of several other individuals, and that authorities have identified other “potential suspects” that may also face criminal charges.
Barriss sought an interview with KrebsOnSecurity on Dec. 29, just hours after his hoax turned tragic. In that interview, Barriss said he routinely called in bomb threats and fake hostage situations across the country in exchange for money, and that he began doing it after his own home was swatted.
Barriss told KrebsOnSecurity that he felt bad about the incident, but that it wasn’t he who pulled the trigger. He also enthused about the rush that he got from evading police.
“Bomb threats are more fun and cooler than swats in my opinion and I should have just stuck to that,” he wrote in an instant message conversation with this author.
In a jailhouse interview Friday with local Wichita news station KWCH, Barriss said he feels “a little remorse for what happened.”
“I never intended for anyone to get shot and killed,” he reportedly told the news station. “I don’t think during any attempted swatting anyone’s intentions are for someone to get shot and killed.”
The Wichita Eagle reports that Barriss also has been charged in Calgary, Canada with public mischief, fraud and mischief for allegedly making a similar swatting call to authorities there. However, no one was hurt or killed in that incident.
Barriss was convicted in 2016 for calling in a bomb threat to an ABC affiliate in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to two years in prison for that stunt, but was released in January 2017.
Using his SWAuTistic alias, Barriss claimed credit for more than a hundred fake calls to authorities across the nation. In an exclusive story published here on Jan. 2, KrebsOnSecurity dissected several months’ worth of tweets from SWAuTistic’s account before those messages were deleted. In those tweets, SWAuTistic claimed responsibility for calling in bogus hostage situations and bomb threats at roughly 100 schools and at least 10 residences.
In his public tweets, SWAuTistic claimed credit for bomb threats against a convention center in Dallas and a high school in Florida, as well as an incident that disrupted a much-watched meeting at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in November.
But in private online messages shared by his online friends and acquaintances SWAuTistic can be seen bragging about his escapades, claiming to have called in fake emergencies at approximately 100 schools and 10 homes.
The serial swatter known as “SWAuTistic” claimed in private conversations to have carried out swattings or bomb threats against 100 schools and 10 homes.
Tags: Andrew Finch, KWCH, Los Angeles Times, Marc Bennett, swautistic, Tyler Raj Barriss, Wichita Eagle
“I don’t think during any attempted swatting anyone’s intentions are for someone to get shot and killed.”
He should have let someone else do the thinking. He needs to get the maximum amount of prison time he’s eligible for considering he has a criminal background doing similar pranks. He’s also going to be paying every dime he ever makes once the victim’s family gets done with him.
Even if the victim’s family files wrongful death charges and wins the award may be dischargeable in bankrupcy if the jury doesn’t find Barriss caused ” willful and malicious injury”.
Because the crime charged is involuntary manslaughter, which can be “reckless” killing, a wrongful death award may not meet the willful requirement.
Not a criminal attorney – just my personal guess.
“…claiming to have called in fake emergencies at approximately 100 schools and 10 homes.”
We really need better technology to track phone calls and email when they are being used for crime. Criminals with tech are running roughshod over the people and I think the people are getting tired of our freedom being used against us.
Be careful what you wish for. We already have a surveillance dragnet thanks to the War on Terror and we’ve seen just how poor the oversight really is. There’s no reason such a system wouldn’t be used against anyone committing thought crimes.
He should get the max sentence. No early release. Afterwards, if a naturalised US citizen, have this revoked and the delinquent sent back to Asia. No place in US for his ilk.
“Back” to Asia?
When I read about this case, it seemed clear to me that if I analogized the facts with California law, this was certainly a case of second degree murder, and not a question of manslaughter, either voluntary m/s or involuntary m/s.
I believe California law could be legitimately applied here, whether the case was filed in California, or in Kansas.
The pivotal issue in this tragic tale is whether the shooting by the Kansas cop was foreseeable or not. If it was foreseeable, it does not break the chain of events that the idiot caller set in motion.
If the shooting was unforeseeable, it does break the chain of events, and the defendant’s liability is much reduced.
I’m a retired deputy public defender from Los Angeles County.
In my opinion, the shooting was entirely foreseeable, and the caller to the Kansas cops should be charged with Second Degree Homicide. The filing of involuntary manslaughter is nothing less than a gift to this idiot, and if I were in Kansas representing him, I would be strenuously thinking about leaning on my client to plead straight up before the DA decides to amend the complaint and bump up the charge.
Death is only foreseeable if a reasonable person were to think police are mindless weapons of mayhem and murder.
Reasonable people don’t expect police to hurt or kill innocent people. That’s why it’s disturbing that a hoax resulted in the murder of an innocent father of two by an unhinged cop.
We expect better of police, because they’re not supposed to be like wild animals or unpinned grenades.
When you say the caller could foresee that a cop would shoot a man at home to death from over 50 feet away, you’re either wrong or indicting all police.
Certainly, a reasonable person would understand that that’s a possible outcome, when you are calling out a SWAT team.
Tyler Raj B’s tweets are still all there. His account was not deleted, he simply changed the name of it to:
https://twitter.com/GoredTutor36
Barriss is clearly at fault for his part in this. However I don’t understand how the blame falls squarely on him for this man’s death. Is the crime of manslaughter the act of calling police? Simply because we should know that the police might kill someone when they arrive?
The officer killed someone in the normal course of doing their job. And yet it is the idiot who called them there to do their job who is solely to blame. I agree that Barriss shoulders the blame for the situation even happening but it is unfortunate that we accept that calling the police on someone puts that person in mortal danger even if they are innocent.
Killing is part of your job as policeman? Their normal job? But you seem to be on to something.
“A Philadelphia police officer has shot and killed an unarmed man who was sitting on a sidewalk.” http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/03/philly-cop-fatally-shoots-unarmed-man-si
“A two-hour search for and chase of a woman accused of stealing a car from a man she knew ended in front of a trailer home police say she was trying to break into. Sheriff’s deputies fired an undetermined number of times at her, hitting her as well as 6-year-old Kameron Prescott, who was in the home.” http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/22/texas-cops-shoot-and-kill-6-year-old-whi
“Arizona jurors watched the video below, which shows former Mesa, Arizona, police officer Philip Mitchell Brailsford shooting and killing a man who was begging for his life and attempting to follow the officer’s orders to crawl down a hotel hallway.” http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/08/arizona-cop-acquitted-for-killing-man-cr
Just doing my job Ma’am.
+1
To claim that calling police is likely to result in injury or death is to say that police are as dangerous as a grenade or a large rabid animal set loose in a crowd. Such a claim removes the responsibility of police for their own actions and literally renders them into monsters. THAT is why charging the caller with death is asinine.
The caller, Barriss, is clearly ripe for a charge of calling in a hoax, theft of municipal services by fraud, attempted harassment (of the addressee), endangerment (of police rushing to assist), disturbing the peace, and general idiocy.
But to claim he recklessly and involuntarily caused an innocent mam to die is to reduce police to uncontrollable weapons or animals. That’s an insult to police, in general, and clearly false on its face.
The one who deserves the homicide charge is the idiot who shot the victim. That cowardly cop deserves to have the book thrown at him for murdering a man from over 50 feet away.
Also, I’ll predict Barriss will either plead guilty or succeed in having the Kansas charges dismissed on jurisdiction. This should have been a federal case. The only crime that occurred in Kansas was the murder of a innocent man by a Kansas police officer.
Except when you call police and tell them that it is a hostage situation and that the hostage taker is armed, you are setting up a highly potential fatal situation.
when you tell the police that it is a hostage situation and that the hostage taker is armed, you are setting it up for a fatal situation.
Has the police officer already been charged who just killed somebody on the spot for no good reason?
Because that’s the real killer. And that’s why people SWAT, because they know state funded killers will come and shoot randomly. Over and over again.
And that’s adequate justification for Swatting?
NO, SWATing should be charged as attempted murder, everybody can see this that the one who made the call is the one of the two responsible.
Because the second and as much responsible is the one who pulls the trigger, a PIG who instead of the police which he embarasses, should be in prison for life too,he is a trained killer and nothing else, braindead.
He’s not claiming that swatting is justified for any reason. It seems you are misunderstanding the comment.
I believe that he should be facing life in prison and not a pitiful 11 years maximum sentence