Former Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor and her family were victims of an overnight swatting call.
“My children were woken up from their bed. Trauma doesn’t even begin to explain what just happened at my house. I have it all on video,” Taylor said in a video shared on Twitter early Tuesday morning.
I was just swatted. pic.twitter.com/MtBhXJCpuT
— Kandiss Taylor (@KandissTaylor) July 12, 2022
The former Republican candidate said that someone phoned her local sheriff’s department using a female text-to-voice program.
The swatter used the program to pretend to be someone who shot her husband multiple times and was going to kill themselves.
Taylor said that she had just come out of the shower wrapped in a towel when her 17-year-old son approached her, saying that he noticed police with rifles outside the house.
“They came with all their weapons – rifles pointed at my house, ready to shoot if they needed to kill me when I opened the door,” Taylor said. She said that her 14-year-old son woke up “crying” and “hysterical.”
Taylor was with her husband and two children at their Baxley, Georgia, home at the time of the incident.
Should the government increase punishment for swatting?
“I don’t care what political party you are, this is evil. This is wrong. This is not OK. And I will find out who swatted my house. And I will do everything in my power to bring them to justice,” Taylor said.
Swatting is a form of prank calling and harassment wherein someone calls police to make a false report about someone else doing something dangerous to get officers to send in a SWAT team to the person’s home or workplace.
Such prank calling can lead to death or bodily harm should police mistake someone for an active threat and open fire.
“Anyone can be the target of swatting, but victims are typically associated with the tech industry, video game industry and/or the online broadcasting community,” the Seattle Police Department said in a fact sheet about the illegal practice.
“We have also seen cases where criminals are attempting to silence people with elevated online profiles, elevating these particular swatting incidents to hate crimes,” the fact sheet stated.
The most recent political victim of swatting, aside from Taylor, was former Trump administration White House strategist Steve Bannon whose Washington, D.C., home was swatted on Friday, according to NTD.
“Whoever made that call to get rifles pointed at my house should be charged with attempted murder,” Taylor wrote in a separate post on Twitter.
In another statement on Telegram, Taylor said the prank caller who targeted her used the free-calling service TextNow.
“We will not waver or be afraid. Instead, I am calling for an investigation into TextNow, who is aiding and abetting Demonic Left Wing Extremists who are committing acts of terrorism against Christian Americans,” Taylor said.
TextNow did not respond to The Western Journal’s request for comment on Taylor’s allegations.
Taylor ran in the Republican primary elections for Georgia governor on May 24.
In the primaries, she came third place behind Gov. Brian Kemp and former Sen. David Purdue — earning only 3.4 percent of the votes.
Despite not winning the primaries, Taylor has been adamant in not conceding.
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