Alleged swatter Tyler Barriss plans more guilty pleas — this time to D.C. threats

Tyler Barriss — the California man accused of carrying out the fatal swatting call that ended the life of 28-year-old Wichitan Andrew Finch — is planning more guilty pleas.

A document filed Friday in federal court says he intends to plead guilty to two charges alleging he called in bomb threats to the FBI and the Federal Communication Commission headquarters in Washington D.C. in the days before he allegedly made the Wichita call on Dec. 28, 2017.

The document asks for the case, one of three he’s facing in federal court, to be transferred from U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. to Kansas for the purposes of a plea and sentencing.

Last month, Barriss asked that a federal case pending against him in California be moved to Kansas for the same reason. In that case, he’s charged with 46 counts alleging he reported bomb threats, shootings and other fake violence at schools and other locations between September 2014 and December 2017.

Earlier this week he told federal court in Kansas that he plans to change his not-guilty plea to 12 charges stemming from the hoax phone call that resulted in Wichita police Officer Justin Rapp killing Finch, an unarmed father of two. He’s scheduled to do that on Nov. 13 before U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren.

If Barriss pleads guilty to all of the pending federal charges, he’d have 60 new convictions.

Barriss, 25, also faces charges in Sedgwick County District Court tied to Finch’s death. He’ll be tried in front of a jury Jan. 7 on counts of involuntary manslaughter, giving false alarm and interference with a law enforcement officer. He has pled not guilty to the those charges.

Barriss is accused of making the Dec. 28 call after he was contacted by an online gamer fighting with another man over the accidental killing of a character in a Call of Duty match with a $1.50 wager. The gamer wanted Barriss to perform a swatting, a form of harassment that involves reporting a fake emergency so police descend en masse on an address, court filings say.

But Barriss was given an old address, 1033 W. McCormick, where Finch and his family lived instead of the intended target.

Believing the murder and hostage situation that was phoned in to Wichita was real, Rapp shot Finch after he stepped out on the front porch of the McCormick house. Police have said Finch failed to follow officer commands to keep his hands up. His family says Finch was curious why police lights were flashing outside.

Rapp testified at a court hearing in May that he didn’t see a gun in Finch’s hand when he fired and never thought the emergency call might have been fake. Rapp was cleared of criminal wrongdoing earlier this year.

Criminal charges filed in federal court against the two feuding gamers, Casey Viner of Ohio and Shane Gaskill of Wichita, are still pending.

This story was originally published November 3, 2018 at 12:00 AM.