Featured Image Credit: FouseyTube
Topics: Police, Social Media, Crime
Callum Jones
The terrifying moment a streamer was swatted in the middle of a parking lot was caught on camera.
Kick streamer and YouTuber Fousey, whose real name Yousef Saleh Erakat, is one of the most popular and recognised influencers on the platform.
However, those who tuned into his most recent broadcast were left a little shocked with they saw.
While he was sitting in a parking lot, Fousey was swatted - much to his surprise.
Advert
Swatting is a type of harassment that involves trying to trick police into sending a heavily armed raid to someone’s home.
Often a SWAT team, they are typically sent to a scene where a crime is actually not taking place, according to the FBI.
The caller is often falsely reporting a serious violent crime such as a home invasion, a hostage situation or even a shooting.
The harasser making the call will often use a fake caller ID or a phone spoofing software to ensure their location is hidden.
In Fousey's swatting incident, he was streaming at the time from a parking lot as several police officers showed up and shouted at him to open his windows.
The police officers even be heard threatening to shoot him if he didn't comply.
Unintentionally, the content creator had started his car before realizing that policemen were standing very close to him.
"Put your hands up. If you reach for anything you will be shot," the police officer can be heard saying.
"Put your window all the way down, put your hand out of the window."
The streamer then tried to reason with the police officer insisting he was a live steamer making content and he had been a victim of a hoax call.
And after Fousey revealed he had a dog on his lap, the situation was not going to escalate any further.
After police made sure the streamer was not up to no good and examined his vehicle, he was able to go back to his livestream.
This isn't the first time Fousey has been swatted, as he had previously tweeted last year for people to 'stop calling the police' on him.
And while this story luckily didn't end in tragedy, other swatting incidents have.
A man was shot and killed by a police officer in 2017 in Wichita, Kansas, in an incident that was later found to be a swatting occurrence.
According to a press release from United State's Attorney's Office in 2019, a man in California was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to causing the incident.