After being given an address by the gamer he was in an argument with, Shane Gaskill, Barriss called the Wichita police posing as his rival. He told the dispatcher that he murdered his father and was holding the rest of his family hostage. A SWAT team showed up at the address provided to him by Gaskill, which was actually the residence of 28-year-old Andrew Finch. The officer involved in the fatal shooting wasn't criminally charged, though Finch's family has sued the city over the incident.

Barriss, now 26, was arrested shortly after the fatal shooting and pleaded guilty to 51 total charges late last year, stemming primarily from numerous false reports he made to emergency services. He was also found to have placed bomb threats to the Dallas Convention Center, a Florida high school and the Federal Communications Commission building during the agency's vote to repeal net neutrality.