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Swatting

Andrew Finch — fatally shot by police responding to a swatting call (Wichita, 2017)

2017-12-28·Wichita, Kansas

Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old uninvolved bystander, was shot and killed by Wichita police responding to a fake hostage call placed over a $1.50 online gaming dispute. The address used in the call had been deliberately given to the swatter as misinformation in the dispute — Finch had no connection to anyone involved.

What happened

On December 28, 2017, Tyler Barriss placed a fake call to Wichita police claiming he had shot his father and was holding family members hostage at a Wichita address. The address had been provided to him by Casey Viner, who was in a Call of Duty: WWII online dispute over a $1.50 wager with Shane Gaskill. Gaskill had given Viner an address he no longer lived at — the home of Andrew Finch, who had no involvement in the dispute and was not a gamer. Wichita police responded as if to an active hostage situation. When Finch stepped onto his front porch in response to the police presence, an officer across the street fired a single shot, killing him. Barriss pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and 50 other charges and was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Viner was sentenced to 15 months and Gaskill to 18 months. The City of Wichita later approved a $5 million settlement with Finch's family.

What happened

On December 28, 2017, Wichita police responded to a 911 call reporting an active hostage situation at a home in Wichita. The caller claimed to have shot his father and to be holding remaining family members at gunpoint with a firearm.

The call was a hoax — what's now called a "swatting" call — placed by Tyler Barriss from Los Angeles. The address Barriss called was the home of Andrew Finch, a 28-year-old who had no involvement in the dispute that produced the hoax. When Finch stepped onto his porch in response to the police presence, an officer across the street fired one round, killing him.

How it started

The dispute originated in an online Call of Duty: WWII match. Casey Viner and Shane Gaskill argued over a $1.50 wager. Gaskill, frustrated with Viner, deliberately gave him an old address — a home in Wichita where Gaskill had previously lived but where Andrew Finch and his family now resided. Viner contacted Tyler Barriss, who had a history of placing swatting calls, and Barriss called in the fake hostage report to Wichita police using the address Gaskill had supplied.

Finch had no online presence connecting him to the dispute. He was, by every measure, a bystander.

What this means for you

The Finch case shows the threat shape in its starkest form: a bad address plus a fake call equals a real police response. For first responders, the same arithmetic plays out when an adversary pulls your address from a broker page and uses it for a swatting attempt — sometimes targeting you, sometimes targeting your family.

The address has to be findable for the attempt to work. Removing it from broker pages is the upstream piece that makes the call harder to place — and sometimes hard enough that the next target is someone else.

For more on the swatting threat shape and what to do if you've been swatted, see /swatting and /swatting/recovery.

Editorial rules: Only public, already-reported incidents. Never name a non-public victim. Always end with the prevention takeaway tied to our service. Cite at minimum one public source per claim.

What would have prevented this

Finch died because someone handed his home address to a swatter over a $1.50 dispute. The same lookup mechanic gets used routinely against sworn officers, judges, healthcare workers, and their families — usually with the address pulled from a data broker. Removing your home address from broker pages is the upstream protection that breaks this chain. If the address isn't searchable, the call is harder to place.

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Public sources