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Around 1 a.m. Wednesday, St. Cloud police officers responding to a report of an active shooter raided the house U.S. Air Force member Joshua Peters is staying at while he's home from Kuwait.
As it turned out, however, the call was a prank apparently orchestrated by someone who was watching Peters play video games for the 60,000 followers he has on the live streaming site Twitch.
Placing prank calls of that sort is called "Swatting."
SWATTING: Prank calls send large SWAT responses to false alarms (5/15/2014)
An anonymous caller to the St Cloud Police Department... [told police] that someone [at Peters's address] "had shot their roommate and now they were pointing their gun at them". Then on the phone call, the police heard "two gun shots" before the call ended.
The practice, known as "Swatting", is intended to cause the dispatch of armed police to the target's house. In Peters' case, it worked.
The aim is typically only to scare the victim, but in practice the attackers risk much more. The more hyperbolic the threats made on the call, the more likely the police will take an aggressive stance in response.
Peters was obviously shaken by the ordeal, and once police left, he recorded a video calling out the prankster, which you can watch for yourself at the top of this post.
"I had police point a gun at my little brothers because of you," Peters said. "They could have been shot, they could have died because you chose to swat my stream."
"Your gripe is with me," he continued. "But do not involve my family in this. They don't deserve it."
Reached for comment this morning, a St. Cloud police official says no arrests have been made in connection with the prank call.
All the information gathered by police has been turned over to the FBI, the official adds.