TN Teen Gets Five Years In Fatal Swatting Incident

Vice News reports:

In April 2020, Mark Herring’s heart stopped beating when armed police surrounded his house, responding to a bogus call of an alleged murder. The swatting incident—where people call in fake threats to the police so officers respond to someone’s address, potentially harming them—was all for the purpose of a scammer trying to gain control of Herring’s Twitter account, @Tennessee, local outlet WKRN reported earlier this month.

Wednesday, a judge sentenced 18-year-old Shane Sonderman to five years in prison in connection with Herring’s death. Soderman pleaded guilty to harassing and threatening Herring and others over the course of five months from December 2019 through April 2020 while trying to steal social media handles. During that time, Sonderman repeatedly called several victims, sent repeated messages to them from various phone numbers, ordered food to his house, and swatted their houses.

Read the full article.

Swatting itself isn’t new, but using the technique specifically to convince someone to hand over their social media account is more novel. https://t.co/Bgvg7IyRPn

— Motherboard (@motherboard) July 21, 2021

Police received a call from his number, claiming Herring had killed a woman on his property. Officers responded, guns drawn. They met Herring on his porch and demanded he put his hands up. That’s when Herring had a massive and fatal heart attack. https://t.co/ycPRmZxpPq

— Josh Mankiewicz (@JoshMankiewicz) July 21, 2021