Swatter In Deadly Wichita Police Shooting Sentenced For Murder

WICHITA, KS — A Los Angeles man with a history of swatting was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for a hoax call reporting a fake murder that led police in Wichita to shoot and kill an innocent man.

Tyler R. Barriss, 26, was sentenced in Wichita under a plea deal that spared him a much longer sentence. He pleaded guilty in November to dozens of charges brought by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles, Kansas and Washington, D.C., stemming from his fake calls and threats, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He had been arrested for swatting two years before the fatal shooting.

Just a few days after Christmas in 2017, Barris made a fake emergency call that led police to surround a Wichita home. In the 911 call, Barris said his father had been shot in the head and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint. The caller, speaking with relative calm, said he poured gasoline inside the home "and I might just set it on fire."

Police surrounded a Wichita house, and the man who came outside to face police — Andrew Finch, 28 — had done nothing wrong and did not know about the call. As he stepped onto the porch, police told him to put up his hands. When he unexpectedly dropped his hands, he was shot and killed.

The phony call that led to Finch's death drew national attention as the first documented fatal case of swatting, a hoax designed to provoke a law enforcement response to a nonexistent threat. According to authorities, Barriss had a long history of swatting, including an arrest before he made the fatal phone call.

In October 2015, Barriss was arrested on suspicion of making bomb threats against a Los Angeles television station that led to an evacuation and forced the news team to do its afternoon broadcast outside. He later pleaded no contest to felony counts of making bomb threats.

He was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail. The Daily Beast reported that Barriss was released in January 2017, was arrested again the same month for violating a protective order then freed in August.

According to The Daily Beast, Barriss was boasting in December with his "SWauTistic" Twitter account about other swatting efforts targeting the Major League Gaming conference in Dallas and the Federal Communications Commission. Cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs unearthed Twitter posts from the same account boasting of swatting calls affecting about 10 homes and 100 schools.

Barriss' fatal fake call stemmed from a dispute over a $1.50 bet on an online game of "Call of Duty." Finch had nothing to do with the game, but police were given his address because it was the former home of one of the gamers, according to the Department of Justice.

In January, three men — Neal Patel, 23, of Des Plaines, Illinois; Tyler Stewart, 19, of Gulf Breeze, Florida; and Logan Patten, 19, of Greenwood, Missouri — were charged in Los Angeles with allegedly conspiring with Barriss to make hoax reports of bombs and murders to police departments, high schools and a convention center across the United States.

The three defendants are charged in separate indictments with conspiracy and conveying false information concerning the use of an explosive device.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.