Reports on Saturday (March 5) painted a dramatic picture of circumstances allegedly going down at Kanye West and Kim Kardashian‘s Los Angeles home. The residence was thought to be the scene of a shooting, and then the target of a prank known as “swatting” (when a person alerts police to a false crime in order to send a SWAT team in). Although there was chatter online stating that police responded to calls of a shooting at the celebrity couple’s residence, the LAPD has issued a statement that they never sent units to check out the supposed scene of the crime.
Several outlets relied on the accounts of the Southern California Monitoring Association, a Twitter feed that monitors police scanners in the region. The account tweeted, “WEST LA: Home Invasion with suspect shot at Kim Kardashian home. Reported cleaning girl shot by suspect. Might be SWATTING call Ch8.”
The SCMA account followed with, “Caller disconnected as officers entered house. Appears Kim Kardashian home is victim of SWATTING call. Officers did breach door to enter.”
US Weekly, one of a few outlets to publish that police responded, published a retraction of their earlier report after confirming with the LAPD that the response to the residence never happened.
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Gossip Cop added that units did respond to a West Los Angeles home searching for a possible shooter but it appears that it wasn’t the West and Kardashian home nor was there evidence of a crime in that instance as well.
The swatting prank has been played on several stars, such as Lil Wayne, Justin Timberlake, Selena Gomez, and Justin Bieber, among others.
Kardashian’s mother, Kris Jenner, was the victim of a swatting prank in 2013, to which the reality television superstar responded by tweeting, “These prank calls are NOT funny! People can get arrested for this! I hope they find out who is behind this. Its dangerous & not a joke!”
Neither West nor Kardashian has spoken publicly about this latest fiasco, although Kim was active on Instagram on Sunday.
