How a 911 swatting call led armed police to break into an Iowa woman's home

Amanda Wallace had just returned to her West Des Moines home from work on Tuesday when she heard a loud banging at her front door.

Wallace, 50, was alone at the time while her husband was at work. The aggressive knocking spooked her, so she didn't answer the front door.

Suddenly though, she saw a police officer pushing open her back door.

"He said, 'We got a call someone had been shot at this address,'" Wallace said.

The empty nester may be the metro's latest victim of "swatting" — a hoax 911 call from a location miles away that prompts major police presence at an unknowing home.

What happened?

At least 10 West Des Moines police patrol cars responded to the scene in the 700 block of 19th Street in West Des Moines around 2:12 p.m., said Lt. Anthony Giampolo, spokesman for West Des Moines police.

In the alleged fake 911 conversation, the caller claimed to be Wallace and told the dispatcher her son shot her husband and was walking around in their backyard with a hunting rifle.

"He might shoot the people in the ambulance or something, I'm really scared," the caller said. "I've never seen him this unhinged."

The call ended with the hoaxer pretending Wallace's son kicked down the kitchen door.

Meanwhile, the real Amanda Wallace was confused in her home.

"The officer next to me — I had never seen a rifle that big," she said.

Police set up perimeters on the home's north and south sides with weapons drawn and shields up, Giampolo said. Since they were told someone was breaking in through the back door, they wanted to cover the whole home.

At first, Wallace thought police had the wrong address. When a reporter played her the hoax 911 call later that night however, she quickly realized her household was the target.

"I do keep going back and forth in my mind, who can do this?" Wallace said. "But I can’t think of anybody who would do this."

Where did the call come from?

A call back to the number directed dispatchers to a Jiffy Lube in Austin, Texas, Giampolo said.

Investigators are trying to determine if it was a hoax 911 call and if so, what charges can be filed.

"I don't know what the motivation is," Giamopolo said. "Maybe it is a case of someone trying to get back at someone else? The scary thing for the police is, are they watching the response to police?"

What is swatting?

While hoax 911 calls have long existed, developments in technology have pushed these pranks to a new level.

Typically, when someone calls 911, the call goes to emergency dispatch in their area. Tech-savvy "swatters," though, are able to make calls to emergency dispatchers miles away and pretend an emergency happened.

The severity of prank calls have heightened to threats of mass shootings or terrorism that require a "SWAT"-like presence.

The crime first started in the online gaming community when players wanted to terrorize others, said Christopher Blake Carver of the National Emergency Number Association.

"Swatting came out at the same time as increased concerns about mass shootings," Carver said. "It adds a whole new level to it."

How often does it happen?

Though the crime is highly publicized, anecdotally, reports of it are still rare and even receding, due to education about the consequences, Carver said.

A man in Wichita, Kansas, was killed in December after police fatally shot him following a false report. The hoax call came from Tyler Barriss, who was playing Call of Duty. Barriss was charged with involuntary manslaughter, giving false alarm and interference with law enforcement.

Since 2013, West Des Moines police has responded to three of these type of calls, said Lt. Anthony Giampolo, spokesman for West Des Moines police. Ankeny police responded to two incidents in 2015.

Des Moines rarely receives false reports, though the exact number is unknown, said Sgt. Paul Parizek, spokesman for Des Moines police.

"We have false reports of crimes made occasionally, however, we treat every call as if it's real until we can confirm otherwise," Parizek said.

In 2013, a Call of Duty 911 hoaxer called Des Moines police and pretended he was a 16-year-old teen that shot his mom and had a stockpile of weapons.

It resulted in dozens of officers converging on a quiet neighborhood and the teenager and his father being held at gunpoint.

"Many times, police officers are put into almost untenable situations where things happen quickly and it happens in a way that doesn’t convey all the information," Carver said.

Can anything be done?

Law enforcement and dispatchers are required to respond to each call, even if something seems wrong, Giampolo said. It's up to officers on scene to determine how to respond.

"If a caller is telling us something, we believe exactly what they’re saying, but in the back of our heads, we can say something is off," said Brian Maydwell, assistant chief of WESTCOM, the metro's western suburbs emergency communications.

Victims of swatting should document who may have committed the crime and provide that information to law enforcement, Carver said. Most of the time, the person who's swatting you wants to watch the results, like through a video game live stream.

Wallace said her sons play video games, but they don't live at home. She said there isn't a single console under her roof.

"I just hope so much they can find the person that did this," Wallace said. "It’s something so stupid that just took someone a few minutes to call and really set off a chain of events for no reason."

Correction: An earlier version of this article misidentified Lt. Anthony Giampolo's employer. He is the spokesman for West Des Moines police.