SENSELESS

Teen Gets 5 Years for Swatting That Led to Death of 60-Year-Old Man

The teenager was targeting and harassing the man who owned the @Tennessee Twitter account.

An 18-year-old was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday for a “swatting” that led to a Tennessee man’s death last year. Mark Herring, 60, died of a heart attack in April 2020 after police responded to a false report of a shooting in progress at his house. Herring was the owner of the @Tennessee Twitter handle, and Shane Sonderman had been trying to pry it away from him through escalating targeted harassment. Sonderman had done the same to several others in pursuit of valuable Twitter and Instagram usernames. Sonderman acknowledged in his guilty plea that Herring’s death was “a foreseeable consequence” of his actions.