‘This is an absolute attempted murder,’ Chad Caton, an outspoken conservative who was swatted, said.
“Please don’t shoot my wife.”
That was Chad Caton’s desperate request as he stood in front of his garage at 3 a.m., staring down the barrel of a rifle.
His wife had hung back inside their home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to secure their dog in a bathroom. As she exited with her hands up, another gun trained on her face.
Caton pleaded again for his wife’s safety with the anxious police officer at his side. He could see the officer shaking and knew that, in tense situations, misunderstandings can quickly devolve into tragedies.
Although frightening, the March 17 incident did not come as a surprise to Caton. As an outspoken conservative and a friend to many previous swatting victims, he’d known there was a chance he could be next.
In fact, just days prior, he’d voiced that concern to his wife.
“I said, ‘I don’t think I’m big enough [on social media], but a lot of our friends are getting swatted, so we need to talk this through,’” Caton told The Epoch Times.
Swatting is a crime that involves making a false police report to trigger a heavily armed response, often a SWAT team, at a target’s home. The perpetrator will often call 911 claiming armed intruders are inside the target’s house, shooting at them and their family members.
These hoax calls have been on the rise in recent years. The targets all seem to have one thing in common: their politics.
Caton spearheads national operations for the Veterans for Trump coalition and served as a surrogate for the president’s 2024 campaign. Other swatting victims have included Republican politicians and conservative media personalities who have amassed significant social media followings.
With just under 50,000 followers on social media platform X, Caton had hoped he was still “small” enough to fly under the radar of the political swatters, but they had nevertheless made him a target, and after watching a swarm of heavily armed police officers sweep his home, he realized how close he had come to losing his life.
“This is an absolute attempted murder,” Caton said, noting that such hoaxes have killed others in the video game streaming community.
Fortunately, recent attacks have not resulted in any injuries or deaths. But both survivors and law enforcement experts warn that could change if the culprits of such dangerous hoaxes aren’t apprehended.
