Serial Swatter only getting 5 years

While writing up news notes for the security box podcast, I just couldn’t get mad at this article. It isn’t Brian’s fault I’m mad, he’s just the reporter. He did a great job in covering this case, and it is quite complicated.

The article is titled Serial Swatter Who Caused Death Gets Five Years in Prison and as I said, it made me mad.

An 18-year-old and his co-conspirator decided to harass various victims including a 60 year old man who died after a heart attack because police and swat teams were at his home thanks to these people. Not only that, but other people are mentioned in this article that have had dealings with the same people.

Shane Sonderman, of Lauderdale County, Tenn. admitted to conspiring with a group of criminals that’s been “swatting” and harassing people for months in a bid to coerce targets into giving up their valuable Twitter and Instagram usernames.

At Sonderman’s sentencing hearing today, prosecutors told the court the defendant and his co-conspirators would text and call targets and their families, posting their personal information online and sending them pizzas and other deliveries of food as a harassment technique.

Other victims of the group told prosecutors their tormentors further harassed them by making false reports of child abuse to social services local to the target’s area, and false reports in the target’s name to local suicide prevention hotlines.

Eventually, when subjects of their harassment refused to sell or give up their Twitter and Instagram usernames, Sonderman and others would swat their targets — or make a false report to authorities in the target’s name with the intention of sending a heavily armed police response to that person’s address.

…

Unable to disengage a lock on his back fence, Herring was instructed to somehow climb over the fence with his hands up.

“He was starting to get more upset,” Billings recalled. “He said, ‘I’m a 60-year-old fat man and I can’t do that.’”

Billings said Mr. Herring then offered to crawl under a gap in the fence, but when he did so and stood up, he collapsed of a heart attack. Herring died at a nearby hospital soon after.

The last paragraph is important, as this poor guy trie to comply and died because of what these clowns did.

There is also a woman that was also targeted because of her two-letter name registered on social media. She decided to use the letters of her name, VD as her username. Not only was she harassed, but a bomb threat was made among other things.

According to the article, the suspect has a confirmed condition of bipolar disorder, and a statement read to the court mentioned this and an adiction to drugs that were psychiactric in nature. The judge sentenced him to the maximum by law, but I wonder if this isn’t enough? Sure, he has medical conditions, and I could make sure he is segrigated from the rest of the public because of his condition, we need to send a message that this type of thing is not to be tolerated. Take the case, and any medical conditions and make a case on sentencing where appropriate. Thoughts? Read the full article titled Serial Swatter Who Caused Death Gets Five Years in Prison for all of the details.