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A 12-year-old YouTube gamer has been through a whirlwind of emotion after a swatting incident took place at his home. Peter Varady, who goes by Rolly Rancher on YouTube, was streaming Fortnite when he got paired up with YouTube gamer Cizzorz in a duos match. Cizzorz, who has over 850,000 subscribers, encouraged fans to subscribe to Rolly Rancher on YouTube as well— and, sure enough, people did.
With Cizzorz’s help, Rolly Ranchers flew past 100,000 subscribers in just a couple of days. Cizzorz continued to promote Peter’s channel through Twitch and YouTube and made this kid’s week. Unfortunately, the sudden notoriety brought Peter an unintended consequence.
A 911 call was placed in their area saying that both Peter and his mother were going to hang themselves. Police and paramedics rushed into their home, scaring the living bejeezus out of them. When Cizzorz found out about the incident, he was dismayed.
He tweeted: “In 24 Hours we helped a kid go from 400 subscribers on YouTube to over 87,000…I was just told that someone Swatted him tonight on his livestream. I feel so awful. There are some terrible ppl in this world. The kid is only 12 years old. I hope whoever did it rots in a cell.”
LAPD is investigating but has not yet identified the swatter. Whoever’s doing this must think it’s a barrel of laughs, but swatting is remarkably dangerous. Tyler Barriss faces up to 11 years in prison. He’s charged with involuntary manslaughter after placing a call that sent the SWAT team to the Kansas house of Andrew Finch. In interviews, Barriss said he’s been paid to make such calls in the past, but declined to say whether he was paid to make the call which resulted in Finch’s death.
He now, of course, regrets the incident, and in Baltimore in 2015, 20-year-old Tyran Dobbs was shot by police after a swatting call. On Thursday morning in LA police responded to what they thought was a hostage situation at the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel.
This Swatting incident apparently originated from inside the hotel, not another location. Fortunately this time, nobody was hurt.
What do you guys think? Why would someone make a prank call like this knowing the potential consequences? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter at @WhatsTrending.
