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HERCULES — Two days after Christmas, police officers raced to a house in this quiet suburb after receiving a call from a distraught young man saying he heard gunshots, his mother scream and that he was hiding in his closet.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” he whispered to a dispatcher, before a scream was heard and the call went dead, according to Hercules police and dispatch records.

Unbeknownst to Hercules and Pinole police as they drew their rifles on a confused and scared family, the call was made up, a textbook example of the troubling trend of “swatting,” where someone calls 911 to report a dire situation occurring at another address, ostensibly to exact revenge on someone, or simply to prank unsuspecting citizens or celebrities. The next day, Dec. 28, a stunningly similar swatting call led to the death of an innocent Kansas man, Andrew Finch.

In that incident, prosecutors allege Tyler Barriss, 25, of Southern California, was upset over a video game bet and tried to send police on a fake call to his rival but instead sent them to a random family in Wichita. When Finch came out of the house that night, he was shot by police and died, making national headlines.

The Hercules family — who’ve spent the past week explaining to their 4-year-old and 11-year-old boys why police pointed rifles at them and handcuffed their father and grandfather — are livid with whoever made the call but also with police, who they believe acted inappropriately and endangered their lives.

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“The person who did this is sick. They need help. We never did anything to anyone to deserve this type of prank,” the wife said Friday from her living room, as her husband sat beside her. “And the police, they did a lot of things that put our life at risk.”

Swatting is not new, but the deadly Kansas case jolted the false police report scam back into the headlines. The callers usually phone in a particularly urgent or violent crime to lure law enforcement or a SWAT team to a location.

In the Hercules incident, the couple, who did not want their names published out of fear of being targeted again, said they were watching a movie in bed, while their in-laws watched “Law & Order” in another room and their two kids played on their iPads in their bedroom.

When police arrived at the family’s house in the 3000 block of North Front Street at 11:38 p.m., five minutes after the call came in, the situation was tense, with police expecting the worst, according to spokeswoman Connie Van Putten.

Instead, they found a quiet scene and Christmas decorations covering the front porch. Hercules and Pinole officers said they knocked on the front door and got no response. But the couple disputed that, saying they never heard a knock and their “yappy” dog would have made a big ruckus.

The fake caller, who went by the name “Jonathan, Johnny or John,” police said, had told dispatch that three to four African-American men were walking around the two-story house and fired shots in his mom’s room. The family said police later told them that the teenage boy caller had a cellphone number with a 213 area code, which denotes a Southern California phone number.

Barriss made his prank Wichita call the following day from Southern California. The Los Angeles Times reported this week that Los Angeles police were investigating whether Barriss was also responsible for other swatting incidents and pranks that resulted in major law enforcement responses over the past year.

In Castro Valley, Alameda County sheriff deputies Thursday responded to a swatting call where a disgruntled Call of Duty gamer is suspected of calling 911 and saying hostages were being held at gunpoint in his rival’s house, spokesman Ray Kelly said. Police believe the same caller, using a computerized voice with a British accent, made a similar false call over the video game beef last May.

In Hercules, police eventually used loud speakers to alert the family they were outside and to come out: “Everyone in (the family’s address) come out with your hands up one at a time,” the couple said they were told by police.

Inside, the couple turned down their TV volume thinking there might be a police situation outside. Then they heard their address being called. The husband peeked out the upstairs window and saw spotlights pointed at his house and thought someone was being arrested out front.

Finally, the family pieced together that police wanted them to come out of the house, so the husband scrambled to get dressed, as his wife tried to get the 4-year-old in clothes.

The father-in-law came out first and was handcuffed, followed by the husband wearing his robe and holding his hands up, he said.

“I’m yelling at the cops from the front porch: ‘What is going on? Is my family in danger?’ ” he said.

As he walked toward a squad car, the husband said the officers ordered him to reach his right hand down to untie his robe.

“I told them ‘No (expletive) way! Hell no!,’ ” the husband said, as they kept asking him to reach down. “We’ve all seen the videos. If you reach down like that, 99 percent of the time you’ll get fired on.”

He warned the officers his cellphone was in his pocket and used his knees to open his robe up, satisfying the cops, he said. He was handcuffed and placed next to his father on the curb. He watched his wife and mother come out with the two kids.

The wife was the last one to exit the house, carrying her 4-year-old in her arms and telling him to keep his head down, she said. As they sat in the patrol car, her young son asked: “Why did they point a gun to my face?”

The house was swept and cleared at 12:24 a.m., according to dispatch records, and nothing unusual was found. The family was released and officers explained the hostage call, Van Putten said.

And then police left, leaving behind a business card, but not taking down their names or anything else, the wife said.

On Dec. 29, the next day, the husband received a text from a co-worker with an article about the deadly Kansas swatting incident.

“We didn’t know it at the time. What’s swatting? It was new to us,” the wife said. She said if police had reported the incident faster, they could have alerted other agencies and perhaps prevented the Kansas crank call.

Van Putten said the bogus call created a dangerous situation.

“It’s extremely hazardous for everyone involved,” Van Putten said. “Our suggestion to the community is if police knock on your door or call you outside, follow the directions completely. Officers are there because they think you are in trouble. Officers cannot leave until they know the people inside the house are in no danger.

“This investigation is ongoing, but from the conversations with people at the house, it did not seem to be anything like (the video game motive),” Van Putten said. “They had no idea why anyone would make a call about their home.”

Police are investigating the case as a misdemeanor filing a false police report, but more serious charges could come as they continue to search for the culprit, Van Putten said.

“The caller appeared to be a young male, but that’s all we have to go on,” she said. Van Putten said that because of the ongoing investigation, the department could not release the 911 call or details about what, if any, phone number was linked to the bogus call.

Van Putten said there was no “obvious connection” to the Kansas case, but “we aren’t ruling anything out.”

“We’re just very happy with the ending with this case,” Van Putten said. “This might be a wake-up call for all law enforcement in the Bay Area.”

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As for the Hercules family, they want to talk to a civil-rights attorney and have begun to line up counseling for their kids who still talk about the incident.

“I hope they find the guy,” the wife said. “I’m also hoping a civil-rights lawyer will help us look at this and make changes in how such incidents are handled in the future.”

When asked about the family’s criticism of the way they were treated by officers that night, Van Putten would only say that after reading the police report, “it sounded like they followed procedures to the best of their ability, based on the number of officers there and the volatility of the situation.”