LAKE STEVENS — Curtis Henke was immersed in a “Call of Duty” video game competition that day in June. Viewers logged online to watch him play.
While that was happening, Lake Stevens police were surrounding his parents’ house, with real guns drawn.
Officers quickly determined that the Henkes were targeted in a cruel prank known as SWAT-ing. Now the FBI is involved, investigating that incident and another from Snohomish County in 2014.
“SWAT-ing” is when someone makes a false 911 call, usually implying violence is under way, to generate a massive police response to the victim’s house. It has happened several times in Snohomish County over the past decade, including a Mukilteo case that led to prison time.
Lake Stevens and Everett detectives quietly made progress working together on two cases, which happened the same month. Court papers indicate they might have been looking at the same suspects. In both cases, the 911 callers took steps to cover their tracks.
This week, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Seattle office declined to discuss the investigation. Unless SWAT-ing cases go federal, they usually are prosecuted in Washington as false reporting, a misdemeanor. They can be difficult to investigate as they often cross state and international borders.
In the Lake Stevens case, the 911 call came through Skype, an Internet video chat service, on June 9. The suspect pretended to be the victim, Curtis Henke, then 20, and said he had killed his father and was going after his mother next.
Police suspected something fishy but as a precaution surrounded the Henke house with guns drawn.
Afterward, Lake Stevens detective Jerad Wachtveitl obtained a court order to retrieve user information records from Skype’s headquarters in Luxembourg, a small country in Europe, and from Twitter.
SWAT-ing “creates a great deal of confusion and potential danger for the victim and law enforcement as law enforcement responds to their residence,” Wachtveitl wrote in a search warrant.
In gaming circles, Curtis Henke is well-known for competing for money while playing “Call of Duty” and other titles, said his father, Warren Henke, 46. Curtis has corporate sponsors, and more than 120,000 subscribers follow his videos on YouTube.
Curtis, now 21, was playing “Call of Duty” live online when the SWAT-ing happened. The family later provided Wachtveitl with information from social media sites from a potential suspect who had reportedly confessed and later erased his posts.
One post reportedly read, “Deleted tweets sorry I’m a (misspelled expletive) criminal.”
Wachtveitl found other postings related to the same suspect and other SWAT-ing incidents. One message read “Holy (expletive) we got the feds dancen(sic)”
The results of Wachtveitl’s court approved searches have not been made public.
Not long after Wachtveitl started investigating the Henke SWAT-ing, Everett police launched a case with similar themes, court papers show.
On June 19, another 911 call came in through Skype. Again, the caller pretended to be a young man. He said he had just shot his mother. The address given was a nonexistent location along Grand Avenue in north Everett.
Detective Timothy Morgan also obtained a judge’s permission to demand records for certain user accounts from Skype. Morgan used that information in applying for another court order for PayPal, an online financial payment service based in California.
The results of Morgan’s investigation also haven’t been made public. Both local agencies declined to share updates on their findings, as the FBI now has taken the lead.
Meanwhile, some of the suspects’ social media user names listed in the local search warrants appear to match those used by people who have been arrested in other parts of the country for allegedly taking part in organized SWAT-ing rings.
Most SWAT-ing suspects are serial offenders, according to a FBI news release from 2013. They’re known to brag about it online. All such threats should be reported, the FBI says.
Meanwhile, life goes on for the Henkes in Lake Stevens.
“It was so surreal when it happened that I couldn’t really process anything,” Warren Henke said. “We were all caught off guard.”
The whole neighborhood was affected, he said. He believes that state law should treat similar incidents more like bomb threats, which can result in felony charges.
The family has heard from other SWAT-ing victims who were thrown to the floor when police arrived, or had their door kicked in, or other property damaged.
“It could have gone bad really fast,” he said. “As time went by, it scared me a little bit more, but at the same time it made me appreciate that much more how well our police department handled it.”
More threats have come in. The Henkes keep their local police force in the loop.
These days, Curtis Henke is working on an associate degree at Everett Community College, his father said. He’s using the money from his gaming to pay for school.
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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