An Ohio teen who recruited a convicted serial “swatter “to fake a distress call that ended in the police shooting an innocent Kansas man in 2017 has been sentenced to 15 months in prison.

Image: FBI.gov

“Swatting” is a dangerous hoax that involves making false claims to emergency responders about phony hostage situations or bomb threats, with the intention of prompting a heavily-armed police response to the location of the claimed incident.

The tragic swatting hoax that unfolded on the night of Dec. 28, 2017 began with a dispute over a $1.50 wager in an online game “Call of Duty” between Shane M. Gaskill, a 19-year-old Wichita, Kansas resident, and Casey S. Viner, 18, from the Cincinnati, OH area.

Viner wanted to get back at Gaskill in grudge over the Call of Duty match, and so enlisted the help of another man — Tyler R. Barriss — a serial swatter in California known by the alias “SWAuTistic” who’d bragged of swatting hundreds of schools and dozens of private residences.

Chat transcripts presented by prosecutors showed Viner and Barriss both saying if Gaskill isn’t scared of getting swatted, he should give up his home address. But the address that Gaskill gave Viner to pass on to Barriss no longer belonged to him and was occupied by a new tenant.

Barriss’s fatal call to 911 emergency operators in Wichita was relayed from a local, non-emergency line. Barriss falsely claimed he was at the address provided by Viner, that he’d just shot his father in the head, was holding his mom and sister at gunpoint, and was thinking about burning down the home with everyone inside.

Wichita police quickly responded to the fake hostage report and surrounded the address given by Gaskill. Seconds later, 28-year-old Andrew Finch exited his mom’s home and was killed by a single shot from a Wichita police officer. Finch, a father of two, had no party to the gamers’ dispute and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Swatting is not a prank, and it is no way to resolve disputes among gamers,” U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister, said in a press statement. “Once again, I call upon gamers to self-police their community to ensure that the practice of swatting is ended once and for all.”

In chat records presented by prosecutors, Viner admitted to his role in the deadly swatting attack:

Defendant VINER: I literally said you’re gonna be swatted, and the guy who swatted him can easily say I convinced him or something when I said hey can you swat this guy and then gave him the address and he said yes and then said he’d do it for free because I said he doesn’t think anything will happen
Defendant VINER: How can I not worry when I googled what happens when you’re involved and it said a eu [sic] kid and a US person got 20 years in prison min
Defendant VINER: And he didn’t even give his address he gave a false address apparently
J.D.: You didn’t call the hoax in…
Defendant VINER: Does t [sic] even matter ?????? I was involved I asked him to do it in the first place
Defendant VINER: I gave him the address to do it, but then again so did the other guy he gave him the address to do it as well and said do it pull up etc

Barriss was sentenced earlier this year to 20 years in federal prison for his role in the fatal swatting attack.

Barriss also pleaded guilty to making hoax bomb threats in phone calls to the headquarters of the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. In addition, he made bomb threat and swatting calls from Los Angeles to emergency numbers in Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Missouri, Maine, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New York, Michigan, Florida and Canada.

Prosecutors for the county that encompasses Wichita decided in April 2018 that the officer who fired the shot that killed Andrew Finch would not face charges, and would not be named because he wasn’t being charged with a crime.

Viner was sentenced after pleading guilty to one count each of conspiracy and obstructing justice, the US attorney’s office for Kansas said. CNN reports that Gaskill has been placed on deferred prosecution.

Viner’s obstruction charge stems from attempts to erase records of his communications with Barriss and the Wichita gamer, McAllister’s office said. In addition to his prison sentence, Viner was ordered to pay $2,500 in restitution and serve two years of supervised release.

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