Member-only story
Testing the Limits of Free Speech
Video-game trash talk and a “swatting” hoax cost an innocent Kansas man his life in 2017. Now, the person responsible for the prank has been sentenced to 20-years in Federal prison.
When a fully-armed Wichita Police Department force confronted the man who answered their loud knock on December 28 in 2017, they were expecting someone else. Someone armed, dangerous, and sducidal. Someone who had already taken one life that night. Someone prepared to take more.
The information from a neighbor who called 911, that an armed man had taken hostages and already killed someone at the address, was credible enough to be taken with the gravest of seriousness.
Who would make up something like that?
When the man who answered the door appeared to be reaching toward his waistband for a weapon, police had to make a very difficult choice. Officers shot 28-year old Andrew Finch on the porch of his home. His family members looked on in horror before they, too, were confronted by police, then handcuffed and led from the scene.
Andrew Finch died at the hospital.
Police officers face volatile and dangerous situations all the time. They do their jobs knowing they may someday be killed in the line of duty. They also know that they may only get one opportunity to make a terrible…