‘Reign of terror’: An online troll destroys a family’s offline life.

[PoliticAverse]

Sharon and Richard Moreno were awakened by a phone call from a police negotiator around 2:30 a.m. one night in May 2014. He told them to get out of their home immediately and leave their adult son behind.

Officers with rifles greeted the couple on their front lawn in Sterling, Va., and tackled their son William on the porch. They had been drawn by a chilling post attributed to William on a popular local Web forum: “I JUST SHOT MY PARENTS NOW I WILL KILL MY SISTER.”

The Morenos say in a lawsuit that the post was a hoax, part of an unrelenting campaign of harassment by “trolls” on the forum, Fairfax Underground, that turned their lives upside down and drove William to attempt suicide.

Trolls are the bane of online forums, games and comment sections, sowing discord with inflammatory remarks and needling other users for laughs. Most are content to cause trouble on the Web, but in the Morenos’ case, the lawsuit says, the attacks made the unusual leap from cyberspace to the real world.

Read the rest at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/reign-of-terror-online-trolls-destroy-a-virginia-familys-offline-life/2015/07/20/a467f9bc-19ba-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html?hpid=z4

[HFRN]

1. that's not 'trolling'

it's impersonation, defamation, and cause of false communications to emergency personnel

'trolling' in and of itself, is not a crime. this, was a package of felonies

[Man from Pickens]

3. They call this SWATting

previously done by phone, not a new phenomenon in any way

It's the new way of having someone killed in a country where there are 60,000+ SWAT raids per year.

As you should be aware, "SWAT team" is the American term for what is commonly known around the world as a "death squad".

[Warpy]

2. I hope they lawyer up fast

and put the screws on Fairfax Underground to cough up their information. Track down the troll or trolls who are trying to escalate this into murder by cop, which is exactly what this could have accomplished.

Yes, this is a whole bag of felonies. Whoever is committing them has to be stopped.

[gregcrawford]

4. This creep has stepped WAY over the line

Only a psychopath derives enjoyment from such behavior. You cannot rehabilitate a psychopath; they are hardwired for malice. If anyone deserves to be SWATted, it's this evil asshole.