Los Angeles man confessed to making deadly Kansas hoax call, detective testifies – By James Queally (latimes.com) / May 22 2018
A Los Angeles man confessed to placing a hoax phone call that led to a fatal police-involved shooting in Kansas late last year, a detective testified Tuesday.
Tyler Barriss, 25, was charged earlier this year with involuntary manslaughter for his role in an incident that stemmed from an online gaming dispute and ended with a police officer fatally shooting a man in Wichita, Kan.
Investigators have said Barriss called Wichita police from Los Angeles on Dec. 28. He falsely claimed he had shot and killed his father and was holding other relatives hostage at gunpoint at a Wichita home, according to a criminal complaint.
“I just shot my dad in the head. ‘Cause. He was arguing with my mom and it was getting way out of the control,” the caller said, according to a transcript of the conversation.
When police arrived, they shot and killed 28-year-old Andrew Finch after he exited the residence and reached toward his waistband. He was unarmed, and police quickly discovered no one had been injured or held at gunpoint at the home.
On Tuesday, a judge in Sedgwick County, Kan., ruled there was sufficient evidence to hold Barriss for trial after the conclusion of a preliminary hearing, according to Dan Dillon, a spokesman for the Sedgwick County district attorney’s office. A trial date has not been set.
During Tuesday’s hearing, a Los Angeles police detective testified that Barriss admitted to placing the hoax call when he was taken into custody last year, Dillon said.
During that conversation, Barriss said he “knew the risks” of making the call and described Finch’s death as unfortunate and the “worst case scenario,” according to Capt. Bob Long of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Major Crimes Division, which investigated the case.
Calls to Barriss’ attorney were not immediately returned. The case is believed to mark the first fatality in the United States related to “swatting,” the act of placing a hoax phone call designed to prompt a massive police response. Barriss could face up to 11 years in prison if convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
The online dispute that led to Finch’s death started when another Wichita resident, Shane Gaskill, became embroiled in an argument with Ohio resident Casey Viner while playing an online video game, according to an affidavit unsealed earlier this year.
Sources previously told the Los Angeles Times that the dispute involved an online matchup in “Call Of Duty: World War II,” a popular first-person shooting game.
Viner threatened to swat Gaskill, according to the affidavit.
In response, Gaskill posted an address on West McCormick Street in Wichita and dared Viner to try something, according to the affidavit. Law enforcement sources told The Times earlier this year that someone involved in the video game dispute contacted Barriss and asked him to swat the Wichita address.
Finch, who lived at that address but was not involved in the game, was shot and killed a short time later.
Police reviewed a Twitter account with the handle @Swautistic, which they believe belonged to Barriss, that had claimed credit for the swatting incident.
Barriss, who will be arraigned in late June on the involuntary manslaughter charge, was well known to police in Southern California.
He previously pleaded no contest to calling in fake bomb threats to a Glendale television station and two schools. Barriss was also arrested in 2017 for allegedly violating a restraining order against his grandmother.
The woman, who had cared for Barriss since he was a child, said her grandson made “constant threats to beat my face bloody” and threatened to kill her after she implicated him in the bomb threats case, according to court records.
Barriss was the target of an LAPD investigation at the time of the fatal swatting incident, and investigators were preparing to present a case to federal prosecutors. The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles have declined to comment on what, if any, additional charges Barriss could be facing.
Last month, Sedgwick County Dist. Atty. Marc Bennett ruled that the officer who shot and killed Finch would not face criminal charges. While Finch was unarmed, the officers were operating based on the information given in the hoax call, and believed Finch was an armed hostage taker.
An internal investigation into the shooting remains open, according to a spokesman for the Wichita Police Department. The officer is currently restricted to administrative duty.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-kansas-swatting-tyler-burriss-20180522-story.html
