SWAT Team Detains Popular Gamer Who Was Live-Streaming ‘Counter-Strike’

An incredible video showing the apparent swatting of a video game player who operates under the moniker ‘Kootra‘ was published today.

Swatting is a prank that involves falsely telling the police of a dangerous situation so that a SWAT — special weapons and tactics (SWAT) — team is deployed in response, erroneously. The police are led to believe that they need to roll out the guns and armor, leaving the intended victim of the prank literally staring down the barrel of the gun.

In this case, a Denver-area building was selected for the prank. Nearby schools, according to local media, were temporarily placed on lockdown due to the phantom threat.

Making the entire situation nearly surreal is the fact that Kootra, whose common name is Jordan Mathewson, was streaming a video game to the Internet when the heavily armed police force entered his location, and detained him.

It isn’t clear who instigated the prank that Kootra was caught up in.

The stream continues for some time until a police officer realizes that he is being recorded, at which point he appears to either shut, or otherwise turn off the computer in question. Until that point, the raid was taped, the footage of which was uploaded to YouTube.

Kootra, a member of a gaming group called The Creatures, is a popular personality with more than 200,000 Twitter followers.

Here’s the video:

Kootra later indicated that he’s safe:

Dag nabbit that was dern sure an experience. I am all Ok though. Thanks for all the supportive tweets everyone

— Kootra (@Kootra) August 27, 2014

While Kootra got through the ordeal, the danger to his person was material. Whomever instigated the swatting should be ashamed of themselves.