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Lethal Swatting: Online Gaming Feud Causes Deadly Cop Shooting

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An innocent Wichita man ended up being killed by a police officer after a SWAT team responded to a non-existent hostage situation as a result of a prank call by a third party – a gamer with a grudge.

Andrew Finch, a 28-year old resident of Wichita, Kansas was killed on Thursday, December 28 shortly after he opened the door of his house to find an entire SWAT team with weapons drawn and trained on him. Even though Finch was unarmed and complied with orders to put his hands up, he then allegedly moved his hands to the waist and one of the officers immediately shot him dead.

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Police were apparently responding to a call about a hostage situation in progress: the caller claimed that the residence owner had shot his father and was holding his other family members at gunpoint.

The call, as it turned out, was a so called ‘swatting' prank, which involves a prankster making a fraudulent call to the emergency services in order to sic a SWAT team upon his victim.

According to media reports, this particular ‘swatting' was caused by an argument between two Call of Duty video game players over a wagered match, with the targeted player providing Finch's address instead of his own.

To add insult to injury, the wager itself was a paltry sum of $1.50.

According to ABC News, Los Angeles police managed to identify and apprehend the person who made this ‘swatting' call, a 25-year old man named Tyler Barriss from South LA.

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