Featured Image Credit: Alliestrasza via Twitch
Topics: Twitch
Popular Hearthstone streamer Alexandra 'Alliestrasza' Macpherson has taken to social media to assure fans she's okay, after a team of armed police raided her house and place her family in handcuffs during a recent broadcast.
Macpherson hosted a Just Chatting stream earlier this week, where she caught up with viewers following a brief break away from Twitch. A little over an hour into the broadcast, she was interrupted by a knock on the door from armed police who were responding to a call.
I've no doubt you already know exactly what happened here. "Swatting" is in an incredibly stupid and highly dangerous prank that involves sending armed police to a person's house under false pretenses.
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It's no joke. People have died as a result of swatting, which probably sounds obvious to anyone with more than two braincells. When you send people with guns to someone's house, and you've just told the people with guns the person inside that house is dangerous, what do you think is going to happen?
Luckily, Macpherson and her family were unharmed. After getting up to answer the door, she returned to the stream several minutes later to let her viewers know she was being swatted. A few moments after that, armed police entered the room and began searching it.
Macpherson finally returned to shut off the stream and to let her viewers know she was okay after a period of worrying silence. “I’m gonna turn the stream off now. The very nice officers are in the house, they’re gonna take a crime report, literally got swatted," she explained. "I’m okay. But yeah, we’re all handcuffed and everything. Everything’s fine, I’m gonna leave and talk to you guys later.”
A little later on, she posted a follow-up on Twitter. “Everything is okay, though. Just a little shaken up with nerves," she wrote. "The officers were great and handled everything very well. They obviously had to take the threat seriously so our whole family was cuffed outside.
"After assessing the threat wasn’t real, we talked to them & gave them the context that this happens to twitch streamers sometimes. The amount of resources that were diverted here was insane, though."
Swatting continues to be a problem for a number of prominent streamers. It go so bad for Félix 'xQc' Lengyel last year that he actually had to move house. Unfortunately Macpherson has no idea who might have swatted her, so for now she just has to hope it doesn't happen again.