Police in Wichita killed an unarmed man targeted by a 'swatting' prank

Police in Wichita, Kansas, fatally shot an unarmed father of two, Andrew Finch, during a SWAT raid now known to be instigated as part of a prank

(Image credit: The Wichita Eagle/Screenshot)

published 30 December 2017

Police in Wichita, Kansas, fatally shot an unarmed father of two, Andrew Finch, during a SWAT raid now known to be instigated as part of a prank called "swatting," a hoax in which an emergency call is made to summon a SWAT team to deal with a nonexistent crisis.

Officers were responding to a 911 call reporting someone had been shot in the head. When Finch, 28, opened his front door to see why emergency vehicles were outside his home, he was shot and his family arrested.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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