Some people take their games very seriously. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but in a competitive game, tempers can flare – and occasionally these arguments lead to deadly consequences. A recent Call of Duty match with only a $2 wager resulted in the death of an innocent man after a competitor attempted to “swat” his opponent.
A Call Of Duty Match Gone Wrong
“Swatting” is a dangerous prank and trolling method that involves making a false report to police and, subsequently, causing a dispatch of armed officers to an opponent’s home. This offense is taken seriously and can cause a real headache for all parties involved, but in this case, an unwitting stranger was killed by a police officer.
The players in the Call of Duty match that got into an argument were named Miruhcle and Baperizer, and one of the players got angry in the course of the match and took things a step too far.
There are still details coming out about what actually happened, but apparently one of the competitors gave information about his opponent to a known swatter, who then returned an incorrect address. While the players had intended to send a SWAT team to their opponent, police officers actually went to an address nearby where they shot and killed a man as he walked to answer the door.
Professional player Christoper “Parasite” Duarte later weighed in on the events with a tweet giving an alleged rundown of the events.
“All i saw was miruhcle posted Baperizer’s dox. So i assume what happened is that after all that happened Baperizer told this swatter to swat Miruhcle, miruhcle then dmed the guy trying to act hard A random address that was CLOSE to him so it would look real. Thats [sic] why miruhcle tweeted “Someone tried to swat me and got an innocent man killed”.”
Why An Innocent Man Died
In an interview with The Wichita Eagle, Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston gave his depiction of what exactly happened that resulted in an innocent man’s death.
“It was a shooting call involving hostages…The original call, we were told someone had an argument with their mother and dad was accidentally shot. And now that person was holding mother, brother and sister hostage. We learned through that call that a father was deceased, and had been shot in the head. That was the information we were working off of…A male came to the front door, as he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”
This is an example of how a Call of Duty match can quickly turn sour. While very few cases of swatting deaths have been reported, anger and trolling is a major problem in the e-Sports community. While players themselves are responsible for keeping toxicity in check, the competitive nature that a Call of Duty match breeds can bring out the worst in people. As e-Sports becomes more mainstream, players will have to be held to higher standards to avoid embarrassing – and in this case, deadly – outbursts.
