A South Los Angeles resident accused of making a 911 call to Kansas as a “swatting” prank that led to the police shooting death of a man in Wichita was booked into jail Thursday in Sedgwick County, Kansas.
Tyler Barriss was arrested in South Los Angeles around 3:15 p.m. Dec. 29 on an arrest warrant issued by authorities in Sedgwick County. He appeared in court in Los Angeles Jan. 3 and agreed to be taken to Kansas to face charges.
Jail records in Kansas indicate he was booked on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter, making a false alarm and interfering with law enforcement.
Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston told reporters previously that the “swatting” or hoax call, in which someone makes a false report of a serious crime to authorities, prompted a SWAT team to be dispatched to a home that the caller described as the site of a shooting and kidnapping.
In the Dec. 28 911 call, a man 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.”
Officers surrounded the home and when the shooting victim, Andrew Finch, 28, went to the front door he was ordered to put his hands up and move slowly. Livingston said Finch moved a hand toward the area of his waistband and an officer, fearing that he was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch, who was not armed, died a short time later at a hospital.
Police in Canada recently announced that Barriss is suspected of making a similar hoax call to authorities in Calgary.
–City News Service